Apocalypse Now
by twistedservice
Summary: Long ago, we said the end of the world would kill everything but us. Do you still believe that? Let the 160th Hunger Games commence.
1. Homecoming

Prologue, Part One.

* * *

 **...  
**

* * *

It's freezing.

It was the dead of winter so that made sense, at least. The first few days of January aren't the time to go tramping around in the middle of nowhere, least of all the woods and the mountains on the other side of District Two's fence. The fence that has been silent for the past month. It's been on since the 155th, since everything that happened, and that made sense too.

She turned back to her companion. "You can go back, you know. No point in you standing out here too."

He shrugged, hands buried deep in his pockets. He's shivering, despite himself. "Does it not feel fitting after all these years?"

"It'll be real fitting when you lose all your toes to frostbite too."

"So sentimental," he laughed. His breath misted away in the darkness. "But hey, what else is new?"

They're a duo of nothing but truths these days, it seemed. All of them are, this rag-tag group of people spread out across the Districts, daring to call each other family because it's as close as they've all got, when they _are_ in fact choosing to spend their time in the freezing woods.

"You think six months is enough time?" He asked. "There's a rough sixty-six ways this could go wrong, you know that right?"

"You have no _faith_ ," she complained, and leaned forward to flick him in the nose. He recoiled, and swatted at her hand. He's right, though. She'd reckon there's more than sixty-six ways for this to go wrong. Closer to several thousand, really. But if she thought going back would end terribly, she wouldn't do it at all. She knows they have faith in her to survive anything, and she has it in herself.

As long as she stayed clinging to that notion, then maybe it would turn out true.

It's actually doing it that seemed to be the hardest part. She continued to stand there and stared up the fence. District Two is so big you almost never see it, growing up there. She always pictured it to be more daunting, somehow, even though it's already close to fifteen feet high. It looks almost pathetically small in comparison to the grandeur of the mountains.

She turned around and there were the edges of a smirk playing on his lips.

"Shut it, Arker," she said, rolling her eyes, and stepped forward to hug him regardless.

"Wasn't going to say anything," he insisted. He wrapped one arm around her back and the other curled around her shoulders, hand pressed against the back of her neck. She can feel his smile against her temple, infuriating as it's become. Like he said, this is six months. She hasn't been alone, not properly, or separated from any of them in the past four and a half years.

Now she has to leave them all because she can't do this anymore.

There's a reason she didn't want the others here. All of their faces looking at her, strangers all those years ago and now people she loves, she didn't know if she could say goodbye to all of them at once. She's always been awful at goodbyes, and now she's positively ruined.

Besides, she only needs one set of hands to give her a boost.

She gave herself one last moment to press her face into his shoulder and stepped back, looking upwards once again.

"Alright. Now or never."

The first few feet are easy enough with some help and then after that she scrabbled to the top, hands catching at the top of the fence until she could pull herself over. She readjusted her backpack at the top before she dropped over the other side, and landed with a wince on the hard-packed snow. Now they were separated by a line of metal fencing, and she stupidly wanted to climb back over it.

"Try not to get irritated and kill someone, hey?" He asked, but she could tell he was joking.

"Coming from you?" She fired back. "Nice try."

She figured that if they weren't joking about it by this point, years later, then they never would. Joking about it is at least better than stewing in it, letting it take over your emotions.

Well, maybe the Capitol wouldn't think that. But they all do.

He rolled his eyes at her and took a step back from the fence. She made herself take a deep breath. It wouldn't take long for her to reach the inner parts of Two; she had the backpack in case she needed it and a radio in case something went disastrously wrong, but chances were she'd be ditching it all somewhere in the woods along the way. Nothing like coming back with a bag full of supplies and ample communication four and a half years after supposedly being kidnapped.

"See you later?" He called out. The sound of his voice was loud - too loud in such an empty space, but she didn't mind that.

"Unfortunately!" She yelled back, and although he was getting smaller and smaller by the second she still saw the finger he shot her. She stood there for a long while, feeling the smile fade from her face the further he got. Finally the trees took him back, out of view, and she was truly and properly alone.

She didn't quite know how to feel about that.

She turned away from the fence. The mountains stretched in front of her, and beyond that, she knew, District Two. Full of warm fires and people hidden safely inside their homes from the snow. Her family, too, tucked away where the weather and whatever monsters were out here couldn't get them.

After all this time she still didn't know if she was ready. But right now it didn't matter if she was or not. She could see it now; the news spreading the next morning, through the streets of the Capitol and all over the Districts. People whispering and staring, confused beyond belief as to how she was still alive after all this time. She didn't even have an answer for that herself.

She hoped the world was more ready than she was for Seren Dobrana to come home.

She took a deep breath and started walking.

* * *

Y'all ready for this?

Welcome back to know one knows what the hell I'm writing about anymore including me!

If you haven't read my second SYOT this literally will make a negative amount of sense to you, but submit anyway because at this point who cares. All submission info/rules/nonsense are on my profile for you to read. Please send everything through _PM_ and not anywhere else.

There will still be two more prologues after this, as per the usual. The list will be posted with the third one.

Until next time.


	2. Back To Life

Prologue, Part Two.

* * *

 **Dominika Gardell, 43 years, President of Panem.  
**

* * *

God, did she hate District Two with an almighty passion.

She wondered who did this place in so badly that even the sun now hates it. She's been here a few times in her years, scattered across the seasons, and the damn sun hasn't been seen once. The Capitol isn't all that far from here and the sun seems to never set.

So what's up with this place?

Something to do with the people, she thought. It's one extreme or the other - those who work underground twelve straight hours a day or those who are well-off, selling precious gemstones in the square and building entire neighbourhoods in their spare time. Most of them stopped when the car detail drove by, watched in quiet fascination. But she still saw those few that stared with open, undisguised malice. It doesn't matter where you are. There's always a few.

She arrived twenty-three minutes early to the house in the victor's village that she gifted the Dobrana family. An apology, sort of, for accidentally losing their daughter and failing to find her for four and a half years.

For a long while, she was so convinced they would find a corpse.

Yesterday, it was no surprise at all when she was woken up in the dead of night to the news that the girl was back.

Dominika doesn't quite know when her opinion on the matter changed. She had just survived the Hunger Games; surely she could handle Arker. Most people didn't think that way. But the longer they went without a body, without any trace of her, the more convinced she was that Seren would either come back, or they'd never find anything at all.

With the car stopped outside the house, she is at least happy that her suspicions were right.

The whole victor's village seemed to be alive. Most if not all of the victors were lurking around and watched with barely disguised curiosity. Cicely Arlington sat across the way on her own front steps, elbows on her knees, seeming to be in the middle of glaring a hole into the front door of the Dobrana house. She wouldn't be surprised to see it happen.

It wasn't not just her, though. It was Ashar Vikken standing on his own front porch, one arm wrapped tight around his wife. It was the minimum three faces she could see peeking out of the windows of every other house, watching. Like they think anything she has on her face is going to give away what happened here.

She still had twenty-three minutes.

"Is it always like this?" Cybell asked from beside her. Her assistant had never been in Two before in all the years they'd been working together.

"Besides the whole returning from the dead shtick?" She questioned. "Usually. Never seems to get any better."

She waited until the security detail had swept the area, watched Cybell step out of the car. Her hair was more magenta than cotton candy pink these days but she still looked too unusually bright for this place. Clearly, Cybell could feel that even more than she could.

It was no question that she had to be here. There were conversations to be had, decisions to be made. She had to start to piece together everything that had happened since the day they had realized Seren was missing. No one in the Capitol had been able to string things along well enough for the story to make any sort of coherent sense, not even her smartest advisers.

They were missing too many things.

When she stepped out of the car she felt a shift in the air. Seren's mother opened the front door of the house, like she had waited until the car door opened for the opportunity. As she walked towards the front steps to greet her she couldn't help but wonder just exactly _what_ she was walking into. The only information she had was that Seren was okay, not the state she was in or anything else of the sort.

"Madam President," her mother greeted. "Thank you for coming. I apologize for my husband's absence. It was quite short notice - he should be home from work shortly."

Things never stopped moving in District Two, not even for her. She wouldn't ask them to. That would be like asking them to do anything other than feign politeness and patriotism.

Behind Mrs. Dobrana she could see both of Seren's brothers lurking in the hallway. Not really a surprise; the two of them had been doing the exact same thing the first time she had come here, a week after the 155th. Mostly silent, disappeared the second she got close. She watched them do the same, flee to some other room before she could even get close.

"No need to apologize," she replied, still watching them go.

She declined the offer of any refreshments and let Mrs. Dobrana usher her to the study, where she said Seren was waiting. The house was quiet, like even the walls were waiting with bated breath to see what would happen. She let the door close behind her, leaving Seren's mother to wait in the hallway outside. The girl - though was she really even a girl, anymore? - had her back to Dominika, sitting in the chair facing the opposite wall. She turned as the door clicked shut.

Dominika hadn't really known what to expect. She looked different than before, though that was no surprise. She was leaner, more sharp. She looked like she hadn't slept through the night in a while. There were scars littered all over her hands and wrists and though Dominika couldn't see elsewhere she could only imagine she looked much the same all over her body.

She _looked_ like she had spent the past few years in the wild.

Dominika didn't know if that was really the truth or not.

She didn't let Seren stand up. She crossed to the other side of the desk and sat down, crossing her legs and folding her hands in front of her. The girl still hadn't said a word and her eyes were full of nothing at all. Nothing she could read.

"Why don't we cut the bullshit," she started. "And you tell me everything that happened."

She watched Seren's face come to life. Watched something spill back into her eyes, watched the corners of her mouth quirk up in something that almost resembled a smirk.

Seren leaned back in the chair and _laughed_. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

* * *

No one know's what's going on - the sequel.

Submissions are still open, obviously. Right now I'm leaning towards asking for more tributes in the 14-16 range and maybe even a twelve year old or two, because I haven't gotten any of those, but my list is starting to look better by the day. Girls are still way more competitive than guys, especially older girls, so you might want to keep that in mind.

My guess is that I'll be publishing the last prologue sometime between Friday and Monday if all goes well; aka your deadline.

Until next time.


	3. The Calm

Prologue, Part Three.

* * *

 **Cambria Mervaine, 39 years, Head Gamemaker.  
Six Months Later.**

* * *

She'd never seen organized chaos summed up so well.

The arena had been finished for a while now but there were still countless tests to be done before the reapings in three days. Before everything was expected to work like a well-oiled machine. She had gotten used to it the past few years; the rapid hustle and bustle of things as the days grew shorter and the time grew closer. The control room was filled to the brim with people all trying to get their work done.

She didn't know if Cyrus was in that boat, considering he currently had Atlas on his shoulders and was trying to explain something to one of his assistants while keeping her son from going crashing straight into the floor. But at least he was trying.

Resani was sneaking something from a flask every few minutes when he thought she wasn't looking and proceeded to flick Sona's stylus off the desk even more often than that when she _was_ looking, causing Sona to swear and duck down in search of it. So scratch that - the assistants were working, and all of the newer hires, but the actual team wasn't doing so well.

Everything else seemed to be going smoothly. The only real thing they had to worry about would be how well Dobrana handled mentoring the Games. She'd been cleared to come to the Capitol in every way that existed to be cleared. And it's not like they could stop her.

Maybe it would help, re-inserting herself back into normal life. Maybe not.

"I have to go," Lex interrupted her thoughts. "I have a date."

"You have a what?" Cambria fired back. Not that that's weird, because Lex has gone on plenty of dates that "never went anywhere" according to her. But now, of all times?

"I'll be in early tomorrow, promise."

"Who is it, at least?" She asked. Did she not deserve to at least know?

"Her name's Jessamine!" Resani shouted across the room. "They've been talking for a month."

"Stop going through my phone, dickhead!" Lex yelled back. "Seriously, promise. Hi Vesper."

She turned to see Vesper swinging the door open, holding onto Mercia. He promptly stole Lex's empty chair and skidded halfway across the room in it, directly towards her. Lex took the opportunity to duck out the door before it had even shut halfway, fleeing the premises before anyone could tell her otherwise. That or try and look through her phone again. She wouldn't put it past any of them.

"What's up, dearest sister-in-law?" Vesper said as the chair slid to a halt. He passed Mercia to her as he stopped, who almost looked disappointed that she wouldn't be flying across the room anytime soon. Though, she supposed, that's something you just have to get used to when your children have Vesper as an uncle. Mercia is already looking across the room, towards where Cyrus is still holding onto her brother. If Cambria's right, that's something akin to jealousy in her eyes.

"Just wondering why both of my children like everyone else in this room better than me," she explained, drawing Mercia closer as she laughed and tried to squirm away.

"Nah, that isn't true," he insisted. "Is it, baby girl?"

Mercia fixed Vesper with a look that said _yes, that is true_ , and he couldn't fight the smile from forming on his face. Cambria let her go with a sigh and instantly she charged across the room. To who, she didn't know. Just someone she liked better than her own mother, apparently.

She does wonder a lot about what the two of them would be like had Ferrox still been here. Atlas knew him, obviously, but his memories of him are already fading fast. Mercia doesn't _have_ any of those memories in the first place, doesn't have any inkling that she sees Ferrox in her eyes and has cried about it, more than once. She's spent far too much time crying, the past few years. She knows Vesper has too, hell, this entire team. At least by this point they've agreed it's better to do it together than to lock yourself in the bathroom and do it alone.

Sona scooped Mercia off the ground before she made it halfway across the room, holding her tight under one arm while Mercia squeaked and tried to struggle away. She looks more like him than Atlas ever has.

"Tell me what you're working on," Vesper said suddenly. Because he _knew_ , they all do. Unfortunately.

"You know that's confidential."

"Says who?" He complained. "Security wouldn't let me in otherwise."

She thinks that security just lets him in because they know he'll find a way in if they don't, whether it be a window or a back door. Hell, she wouldn't put it past Vesper to come crawling through the air ducts and fall out of the ceiling.

The thought put a smile on her face, and whether it was truly Vesper's doing or not he at least looked satisfied. He stood up and kissed the top of her head.

"Okay, seriously, I gotta go now."

"You can't use the date excuse. Don't pull that shit."

"Says who?" He repeated.

"You're _engaged_ ," she insisted.

"I can still have a date." And yeah, maybe she would be more inclined to agree with him if he wasn't sticking his tongue out at her as he said it. She thinks it has more to do with this place. Vesper is interested, would never fake that for the world, but this isn't his place and he doesn't want it to be. That was always Ferrox, and he's said since day one that he's not replacing him. That he couldn't.

She doesn't think anyone ever could.

* * *

anapocalypsenow . blogspot . com

* * *

 **District One:**  
Dimara Vespoli, 18.  
Tavian Muric, 16.

 **District Two:**  
Anya Preising, 15.  
Blair Carnell, 18.

 **District Three:**  
Early Sinnett, 14.  
Shirin Azami, 17.

 **District Four:**  
Celia Bradshaw, 18.  
Rodrik Mirevale, 17.

 **District Five:**  
Isi Akiloff, 17.  
Parker Walden, 13.

 **District Six:**  
Farren Laboy, 17.  
Casper Tolson, 17.

 **District Seven:**  
Tanis Maes, 15.  
Camden Kershaw, 18.

 **District Eight:**  
Olympia Kuidas, 13.  
Vance Derora, 16.

 **District Nine:**  
Laurel Oversnow, 16.  
Rooke Arvelle, 16.

 **District Ten:**  
Kelsea Faraday, 13.  
Houston Harrels, 12.

 **District Eleven:**  
Oeshe Ito, 18.  
Zion Lancaster, 18.

 **District Twelve:**  
Nadir Kuenzli, 17.  
Jaeden Hillion, 15.

* * *

Friendly reminder that it's the year 2017 and if you still feel the need to rag on other people's tributes based on a blog post go take a fucking nap instead.

As always, I got a ton of great submissions. Estimates are probably around 35 total, if not a bit more, so obviously I couldn't take them all. If I didn't take your tribute it was most likely for one of two reasons - one being that I couldn't think of anything good to do with them in terms of backstory or where to put them, two being I just flat out didn't like something about them and didn't want to say it. No hard feelings towards anyone personally, I did get a ton of great ones, often times multiple great ones from the same person that, for fairness reasons, I didn't end up taking.

I am going to _try_ to update every weekend, starting this upcoming one. Old habits die hard.

Until next time.


	4. Almost Golden

Reaping Day, Part One.

* * *

 **Rodrik Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

There's another cheque in the mail.

Not that I'm surprised. It's usually on the first of every month but it's nearing the end of May and I won't be here for June. The Academy's way of ensuring that I'm actually going through with it today.

I don't really remember the days where people had to pay to get through the front doors of the Academy, to risk their lives for a chance at death. How things have changed. Now they're scraping the bottom of the barrel in the barest hopes that they can spare the small, innocent kids of Four from dying a painful death. It's not a bad trade-off, really. At least I know that when I do inevitably die my family will be taken care of after I'm gone.

It hasn't gone quite that far in One or Two yet, but they've always been notoriously better off. Not like Four, where two kids got reaped in the 156th and no one stood up to take their places after seeing what happened to the tributes from the year before. I remember watching that - it was a boy in my grade, who had looked so confident until the escort had asked for volunteers and nothing but silence responded.

"That another one?" Mom asks, reaching around my shoulder to examine it. I nod and pass it back to her. Like I said, no use in me keeping a hold on them. I won't need them after today.

"Your sister wants to go to the square early and I said you'd go with her. That alright?" She asks. She looks sad, but she's looked like that for a while, since I told her they chose me. They could've waited until next year, they had said, but that meant sending in someone younger than me this year and that doesn't seem fair. But she'll be okay, and so will my siblings. Really, that's all that matters to me; that they'll be taken care of when I'm no longer here.

"Sure thing," I respond, and drop a kiss on the top of her head. I know she'll be right behind us with Dorian but Lyria's been sitting on the front steps for ages, raring to go. For what reason, I'm not exactly sure. I'm volunteering and even _I_ don't want to be there early.

"You're so slow," Lyria complains when I come down the front steps. "Some kind of volunteer you are."

She's joking, like she always does, but wraps her arm around my waist and leans into my side when she stands up instead of skipping ahead like she usually does. The square is already packed to the brim and she doesn't stray far from my side. Really, I don't know who's taking it harder - her or Mom. Dorian's still young enough to believe in the delusion that I'll be the one to come back, so it'll take a while to hit him.

"Rory," Lyria says, hitting me in the arm. Judging by the sound of her voice she's said it several times now. "There's someone volunteering for the girls, right?"

"Yeah, Malia Bradshaw." I haven't caught sight of her yet but she's around somewhere, surely. It's kinda hard to miss her, looking like she does.

If there wasn't a guaranteed female volunteer there's no way I would have agreed to this. Not when even the slightest possibility existed that my sister could be the one up there with me.

I drop Lyria off at the 15's, where she's instantly swallowed by the crowd of girls as she goes off in search of her friends. She squeezes my hand before she goes, leaning up to press a kiss to my cheek with a whispered _good luck_ in my ear. I smile as she goes off, and then head off to my own section.

I don't go in search of my own friends. There's really no point. Most of the guys around know it's me anyway. I wait in silence while the minutes trickle down, catching sight of my mother, eventually, with Dorian clutching tight to her hand at the front of the crowd. She waves, something she obviously thinks is a reassuring smile plastered to her face, but she's terrified.

I think we all are.

Eventually, the escort takes the stage. The silence feels almost deafening, seeming to roar in my ears. I watch as she crosses over to the boy's bowl, but I don't hear the name she calls. The second I see a boy younger than me starting to move out of the 16's I move myself.

"I volunteer!"

I see him sigh in relief. He wasn't even at the aisle yet. The boys around me part without question to let me start for the stage. Lyria reaches out of her section to squeeze my hand as I walk past. My voice didn't shake when I said it but my hands sure are, and clearly she knew it too. I'm hardly on stage before they're calling for the female. Probably don't want to risk anything weird happening, which seems to be Four's new normal the past few years. Malia's stepping out of the 18's before the escort even gets the name out of her mouth.

That's when, almost predictably at this point, everything goes to shit.

Malia's halfway up the stairs when it happens. Someone else comes peeling out of the 18's, and I blink . It's her sister. Twin sister, actually. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen them together before. That's why it's so startling. Malia's just about to step onto the stage when she notices, and stops.

"Problem, sister dear?" Malia asks.

Celia. That's her name. Celia looks decidedly unimpressed. Or at least she did, until a smile nearly splits her face in two she looks so positively thrilled.

"Actually, yeah, there is."

"Uh-oh," Theo says, sitting in his victor's chair. But he sounds _amused_.

She punches Malia in the face.

All I do is stand there, useless as ever.

Malia falls to the ground, but not before she grabs onto the edge of Celia's dress and drags her down too. One of them's screaming. It's impossible to tell who. I blink, realizing my jaw should be about touching the ground beneath me by now.

"Nah, let them fight!" Ronan orders, standing up from his chair. The Peacekeepers headed towards them falter. "Why didn't we do this sooner?"

Theo's cackling, now. The two of them are still on the ground, writhing frantically. Someone's bleeding, or maybe both of them. Most surprising of all, it doesn't take long. Celia quite literally kicks her sister in the gut with the toe of her pointed heel and then shoves her back down the stairs. Malia thuds into the ground, bleeding from the mouth and nose while Celia rises to her feet, still on the stage. Her nose is bleeding too but she's got a handful of her sister's hair in one fist and most of all, she looks beyond triumphant.

She turns to me. Or maybe the escort, the victors. I don't really know. I don't think I wanna know.

"I win," she announces.

I feel all the blood drain out of my face.

Theo never stops laughing.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

It's a beautiful day.

Ignoring the fact that I can't see absolutely anything, but what else is new?

I hate crowds like this. When there are this many people around I don't have a single hope of being able to outstretch the crowd to see what's going on around me. Fletcher's really the only one who's got a hope of that, separated from our parents as we are. Maybe being twenty-two helps with that. If that was the logic though then Clarissa would be able to see too, and she's got six years on me and maybe one inch.

"Where's Sam?" Fletcher asks suddenly, looking around. Our brother is apparently missing. And to think five seconds ago he was about a foot in front of me.

I shrug. " _You're_ the one that can see. Don't ask me."

I'd almost feel bad, if Fletcher wasn't used to keeping track of us all. Mainly Sammy, because I'm the _good_ one, and Clarissa's more than capable on her own.

There's still no sign of him. I shake my head. We're almost at the barricade.

"I'll find him," I insist. "Besides, you guys have to stop here anyway."

Fletcher and Clarissa let me go without any fuss. Our parents have probably gotten lost in the crowd, but they'll find them eventually.

I'm in line, waiting to get hit with a needle, when I finally catch sight of Samuel. He's with his friends, which is good, having apparently decided waiting in line for me was not something he planned on doing. I'd be more offended if he hadn't done this last year too, when Clarissa was escorted away to the 18's and I was left alone my first year.

I get through the check-in without any fuss. There's no point in chastising Sammy now, but I stride over and hit him in the shoulder as hard as I can anyway. He stumbles forward into one of his friends and I dart away before he even turns around, letting the crowd swallow me back up. He shouts something after me, laughing, but I'm already gone.

"Kelsea!" Someone calls. I think it might be Ada, and I edge my way through a group of girls at the edge of the 14's and come face to face with her. She's smiling ear to ear, uncaring of the commotion around her as per usual. I like to think of myself the same way. This doesn't bug me like it probably should. It's going to suck no matter who it happens to, but I have Ada here with me, arm looped through mine, and it's not long before Eliza shows herself as well.

"What's up, guys?" She asks, breathless, as she shoves her way to us from the aisle. Half of her hair is already falling out of her braid, like she sprinted all the way here from the line-up.

"I think I should go back and punch my brother again," I contemplate and Eliza lights up.

"I'll do it," she volunteers. "Better than standing around here. I hate waiting like this."

I reach out and squeeze her arm. I hate it too, and we've still got four more years after this, but I'm confident we'll get through it. Sammy will be free in three years after this and both of Ada and Eliza's siblings in even less than that. We're almost golden.

The escort's new this year, and looks nervous. The crowd falls into an uneasy hush as he takes the stage, dipping his hand into the bowl, and Eliza leans her head on my shoulder, nervous herself.

"Houston Harrels!"

There's a pause, and then a boy steps out of the 12's. Everyone in the immediate vicinity sucks in their breath, and I feel Ada squeeze my hand a little tighter. I might have seen him at school once or twice, but not enough to really recognize him. He clenches his fists together and takes a deep breath and starts walking, even managing a little smile. I have no idea how he's doing it. I can imagine what my reaction would be like, and I don't think it'd be pretty.

I don't know what the boy says into the microphone. All I register is the way Eliza tenses up next to me as they move onto the girls, as the escort unfolds the paper and—"

"Kelsea Faraday!"

Ada makes a small, choked noise.

For a long moment, no one says anything. Eliza very slowly turns to look at me, like she's not sure she heard him right. My heart feels like it's dropped out through the bottom of my stomach. It should be lying on the ground at my feet, blood splattered all over the three of us already.

"Kels," Ada breathes. I turn my head towards the aisle. I haven't moved fast enough - there's already a Peacekeeper headed in this direction. They won't need more than one of them to drag me out there.

"Wait, wait, don't," an almost unfamiliar voice interrupts. The Peacekeeper stops. The boy from before, Houston, is off the stage and back in the aisleway. He makes his way to my row and holds out his hand. That nervous, uncertain smile is back on his face as he stretches his arm out towards me. Trying to get me to come with him.

I can't. Can I? I don't have a choice. No one is going to volunteer for me. Right now I'm on my own, because Eliza has very slowly started to let go of me because she's finally realized she doesn't have a choice in the matter and now Ada is crying, a hand pressed over her mouth, and I rapidly blink back the tears that I can't let fall. Not now. Not when I have a chance to do something.

I'm alone, but I don't have to be.

I reach out and take his hand.

* * *

 **Shirin Azami, 17 years, District Three Male.**

* * *

There was an explosion in Sector Six last night.

Not a particularly big one. Just something gone a little too wrong in one of the factories and the next thing I know I'm getting woken up after less than two hours of sleep, my help apparently needed.

I'm still not quite sure how I ended up here. Sure, this has been the family business for practically years now, but I never wanted to be in the thick of it. I don't think it's in me, to want to help people the way they need to be helped. Three people got dragged through our front door in the early hours of the morning, skin blistered and broken, moaning in agony, and there was no urgency in me. My father had leapt into action because that's what he does and my mother had been there too, in the kitchen, washing fresh rags and filling buckets with water.

Two of them were still clinging to life, in the back room. The third, a nineteen year old who had started at the factory two weeks ago was dead on our kitchen floor, covered by a white bed sheet because his crewmates were still trying to track his family down. Until then, there wouldn't be anyone to collect the body, and I sure as hell wasn't about to throw it in the back yard.

It's nearing dawn, anyway. I won't get back to sleep before the reaping starts.

I pull out a chair at the kitchen table and lean back in it, staring at the sheet. There was no saving him. Maybe if we had the resources and access to the good stuff, the Capitol Grade medicine that would really save people, but not with what we had. It's not like that kid could've afforded it anyway, nor his family, and we couldn't waste money trying to save people that couldn't be saved.

That's not how life works.

Our success rate has been dropping lately. The weather is starting to turn warm and too sticky, infection festering in the back alleys. The closer to reaping day we get the more people seem to show up at our front door. A lot of kids, too, who probably don't care about what state they're in by the time the day hits.

Speaking of, I should probably shower. There's blood drying and flaking between my fingers, underneath my nails, all over my hands. I don't think the officials would appreciate it.

I don't get a chance to before there's a commotion at the door.

My father gets there before I can even fully get to my feet. There's no proper introduction. The door opens and a woman comes barging through, probably about my own mother's age. She looks hysterical, her eyes already red-rimmed.

When she catches sight of the sheet she starts screaming.

Guess they found his mother.

I narrowly avoid her as she goes barreling past me, dropping to her knees on the tile. She doesn't seem to care that there are two other bodies in the back room, fighting for every breath they take, but I can't really blame her for that. Neither do I. Not really.

There's a few other people milling around now. The one that really sticks out is a boy about my age, who could be a brother or a cousin or a friend who somehow found out. My father is trying to talk to them all at the same time, his voice hushed and comforting. The boy keeps looking at me, though, and he looks angry. Confused, maybe, about how he ended up here.

We're in the same boat with that one.

Maybe it's because the last, tiny shred of empathy in my body for that dead kid and now his family went away the second he screamed at me, when I tightened the tourniquet around his mangled leg a little harder than I should have. Now I don't care at all. I tried to save him. I've tried every single time, failed to care even more that. They never realize that, in the heat of the moment. When I've got two fingers inside someone's abdomen trying to coax their insides back in they think I'm their last hope, the last thing stopping them from slipping away.

When they slip right out of my grasp I stop trying. Sometimes someone else in the room will try to resuscitate them, bring them back. It doesn't usually work. I'll take a step back and put air back in my own lungs and accept that there's no use trying, sometimes.

He's still staring at me. My father is on the ground next to the weeping woman, now, an arm wrapped around her shoulders. I can hear my mother's voice floating in from the back room, soft and comforting. Sounds like one of the other guys has finally woken up.

It's more than this kid will get to say.

I make my way across the room, towards the stairs. I really do need to shower. On the way there I drop a hand on the boy's shoulder. He startles and keeps his eyes fixed on where the sheet has been drawn back, towards the too-white face of the corpse that I've been staring at all night.

"I'm sorry for your loss," I say, and his jaw tightens. We both know I don't mean it.

When I go, I leave a bloody hand-print behind on his shoulder.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.  
**

* * *

Maybe we should've stayed home.

It's about four in the morning, I think, or at least it was when I left the house and met up with Aubrey and Pax three streets over. Maybe fifteen minutes to walk to one of the nicer parts of town, because I'm not about to feel even worse and steal from one of the people who can hardly afford it.

These people, the merchants in the square, they won't miss a thing.

There's a crash from the front of the store and I hear Pax swear under his breath before silence falls over us once again. Aubrey pops in her head in from the alleyway to check on us, raising her eyebrows, and I shrug.

My backpack's mostly full of the stuff I want. Just enough supplies that we can keep the murals and the rest of the artwork in the back streets going but hopefully not enough that someone takes notice of it. We've been especially carefully lately, about all of this, ever since the rumors started flying. Ever since they started looking for thieves in the first place, because we don't quite know how to stop.

"Patrol's coming in from the north, guys," Aubrey says urgently, popping her head back in the window. "We gotta go."

I head for Pax immediately, but Aubrey's got a hold on my arm the second I make my way past the window and has tugged me half out of it before I can even blink. She yanks me through and I land in a heap at her feet in the dirt, grimacing. At least I didn't land on the backpack.

Pax pops his head out of the window, then, an amused noise escaping him as he sees me picking myself up off the ground. He scrambles up and over just as I see the Peacekeeper's flashlights start to widen across the square, already half set-up in preparation for the morning.

"Time to go," I say and before I can even shove him Pax takes off down the alley with Aubrey at his heels, clutching tight to the back of his jacket. His hands are covered in paint, or maybe oil, which is probably why Aubrey's not touching him. So much for not leaving anything suspicious behind.

It doesn't take long for us to get back to the fringes of the square. We've all learned to get faster these past few months, to stay more hidden than we normally would. No wonder Emmett's still safely tucked away in his bed, not far from where we are now. The last of our little group has never been this daring and probably never will be. I can't say I blame him. This is stressful, always has been. But it's worth it.

"See you in the morning," Aubrey says, giving me a quick, one-armed hug. I back up when Pax even attempts to get close to me.

"It is the morning," I point out. She pokes her tongue out at me.

"Whatever, idiot. See you."

I wait until she's safely dragged Pax off and around the corner. No sign of any Peacekeepers, and we didn't hear anything as we were running off. Looks like we're safe. Still, I wait until they're gone just to be sure.

The door to our house is unlocked, just as I left it. It's hard to trust that no one will rob you blind while you're out doing almost exactly that, but it makes less noise. Plus, I can't risk waking my parents. They still don't know I'm out almost every other night, that I spend my waking hours using the supplies we get to color the District. I wonder if they ever will.

I creep upstairs, clutching tight to my bag. I shut my door behind me, kick my shoes to the end of the bed, and tuck the backpack under the furthest corner of the mattress I can manage, until it's completely lost in the shadows. My reaping clothes are already laid out across the room, a stark reminder that I don't have that much longer until it has to be faced. But right now I have this.

Even laying down in bed doesn't stop my heart from racing. It's the same feeling that runs through my veins every day now.

I'm still not quite sure how this all started. All I know is one day I was living the life of every other average, poor but not quite teenager - tromping to school and then work and then coming home to nothing at all, really, but at least I had a home.

Now my art is spread all over the District, and my friend's, and my name may not be out there but it feels like it is, almost.

I know my parents would disapprove, and that's just the art. Let's not talk about the thievery because I'm not about to take family money and use it for something that they deem as trivial, no matter how passionate I am about it. Being an artist isn't going to get me anywhere in Eight. Not going to do anything no matter where I am, really.

But I have my friends who love it just as much as I do, and the paints stashed under my bed and the knowledge that even when I'm gone I could still be here. That paint dripping down brick walls means something, to certain people. That all those colors make up who I really am.

It's not rebellion. That's never how it was.

But it keeps me up at night, the spark of kindling right at the bottom of my heart, and that feeling alone is enough.

* * *

Friendly reminder before we get into the thick of things that I came up with 98% of these backstories/families/whatever, so if something's weird you have no one to blame but me. Well, besides the few people that sent me half their tribute's form in 2016 because they got too excited. Shout-out to those assholes.

Thank you for all of the reviews last chapter. That's it I think. What do people even say in A/N's anymore?

Until next time.


	5. Thrown To The Wolves

Reaping Day, Part Two.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

The knocking won't stop.

I knew the barracks of the training center had paper thin walls, but this noise is something else. Judging by how loud it is, it's coming from the door. But I heard Ingo and Vitus leave an hour ago, and the only other bed in the room is still filled with a Julian sized lump, so someone's just what, being an asshole?

Apparently.

I stumble out of bed and feel around for what I'm hoping is a shirt and a pair of pants and yank the door open.

It's Mauro.

"Oh, fuck off," I sigh and try to shut the door only for Mauro to step closer, wrenching his arm in the gap to stop me. I glare at him for a long moment while he stares back.

"Just come outside and talk to me, please." It sounds polite. We don't tend to do polite very well in this family, or at least what's left of it. I sigh again, wondering if I'm imagining Julian snickering from under the blankets behind me and step out into the hallway, still clutching at my clothes. The door swings shut behind me.

"Why are you half naked right now?" Mauro asks. As if that's the type of things brothers are usually concerned about.

"You're the one that just woke me up at - what time is it even?"

"Six."

"That's disgusting," I inform him, scowling. "The reaping's not for like four hours. Is there something wrong with you?"

I look down at the clothes in my hand, which turns out to be two different pairs of pants. I shouldn't have even bothered.

"I asked around," Mauro starts. I have no idea how he looks so alert right now. "Rufus Tredwell is still volunteering. Right?"

"Right?" I respond. If Mauro's trying to get at something here, he better hurry it up before I fall asleep standing up in front of him. Probably wouldn't be the first time. He does nothing but continue to stare at me like I hold all the secrets to the universe. Maybe it's the sleep deprivation. If he came over from the trainers barracks then he's probably been up for a while.

Besides, why do I care about Rufus Tredwell? He's the asshole the trainers replaced me with.

"Ingo just told me that you were thinking about it."

Of course it was Ingo.

"Ingo has the IQ of a squirrel," I inform him. "It's not my fault he doesn't know what's going on."

Evidently, Mauro doesn't believe me. Not that he ever really does. He's always been a blatant skeptic, tried to fix things that couldn't be fixed. That's the reason we're here, why I only associate with him when he comes knocking at six in the morning and there's nowhere to run. And, to be fair, I associate with lots of people. Sure, I'm not lying about Ingo being stupid as all hell and Vitus only what's going on a rough quarter of the time, but at least Julian's got it together. That, and you're not able to get solo sleeping quarters while you're a trainee.

"Just listen to me for once," Mauro pleads. "I'm _serious_. You don't need to do this. I don't want you to. Neither does dad, he—"

"Did he tell you that in your weekly phone call session through a glass pane?" I interrupt. I don't know if it's actually that often. What I do know is that I haven't bothered to take the two mile trek to imprisonment hell to talk to our father in over six months and Mauro still does it on a fairly regular basis. I don't know what he's clinging to, at this point. At least one good thing came out of all of this. I learned that hope is a very feeble, breakable thing a long time ago.

"We're going to fix this, you know. When he gets out this all stops. It can't go on forever."

"But it will for what, the next forty years? Because that's how long it's going to take. Just ... just stop getting your hopes up. It's a lot easier once you do."

Mauro scrubs a hand over his eyes. "I won't come to the goodbyes."

"Good for you?"

I don't blame him for being infuriated with me, but it's a two-way street. We're just such different people. We have been for far too long. Even if he's serious, even if by some miracle we could fix this, I don't know if either of us are capable of that. We got dropped into the training center as young kids, almost but not quite orphans, thrown to the wolves without a care in the world. Every single thing in my life has been decided for me without me even being aware that I had a choice in the matter.

I wasn't going to let that destroy me.

I watch Mauro walk off down the hallway, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets. It occurs to me that I'm still standing in the hallway clutching two pairs of pants, staring after his retreating form, and I quickly pry the door back open and slam it shut behind me. This time, I lock it.

"That went well," Julian says, lifting his pillow up over his head to look at me. I give him the finger, but he chuckles and holds out a hand. I bump my own against it, satisfied.

At least someone's still on my side.

* * *

 **Parker Walden, 13 years, District Five Male.**

* * *

Having to deal with Mya at the reaping now is infinitely worse than it just being myself.

Not because I'm scared of her getting taken. That's the last thing on my mind. Her meager one slip isn't going to be picked. There's been years upon years where there were no twelve year olds at all; I know, I've looked at most of the history.

Mya doesn't seem to understand this, however. There's a reason she's clutching at my hand like if she lets go the Peacekeepers are just going to take her anyway regardless of the name they call. She looks like she's about to break down in tears any minute, her eyes darting in every possible direction. I get it, there's a lot of people around. She's been with our parents every year before this, watching from the fringes of the crowd. Last year I could hardly catch sight of her and the rest of the family we were so far apart.

Now I'm the only one she has to hold onto. Mom and Dad are safely kept outside the pen where she can't run back to them, no matter how much she wants to, and I think most of her friends are as terrified as she is. No one to comfort her there.

"Don't cry," I tell her, and I watch her lip quiver as they sink the needle into her fingertip. Clearly she's trying her hardest, but I don't think her hardest is that great.

Besides, it doesn't even hurt. A pinprick of blood and that's it before they're ushering you through without hardly a second glance at your name and picture to make sure it's really you.

I have to take Mya all the way to her section and even then she looks reluctant to let go. I squeeze her hand and finally withdraw, tugging my hand a little harshly out of her grip. For being so little she's surprisingly stubborn when she wants to be.

"It'll be fine, Mya," I sigh. "It won't be you."

No matter how many times I repeated the very same words before we left the house this morning, she doesn't believe me. Or care. There's hundreds of older girls lined up behind her, some with dozens of tesserae. But she's never cared about the likelihood of things like this. It's always only been me. Even my parents think I'm being too harsh with her, that she _should_ be worried. Maybe in a few years, yeah. Not about herself, not right now.

Realistically, Mya should be worried about whatever girl behind her, who will most likely end up dying some awful, bloody death.

That's the normal.

By the time I'm finally able to separate from her there's no time to find Simeon in my own section, not that he'd appreciate it anyway. Even my only friend doesn't really understand how I'm so calm about all of this. That's his issue, though. If he doesn't want to understand the history, the logic behind it all, then I can't make him and I'm not about to waste my time trying.

Even so, I'm still trying to catch sight of him even while they're going through the speeches. I've memorized them all anyway a dozen times over. Every word they're saying is something that I've committed to my memory.

I can't help but keep my eyes on Mya when they finally move over to the girl's bowl. She is crying, now, and there's no one there to stop her from doing it. It's not like I can yell across the aisle at her to cut it out.

It doesn't matter though.

"Isi Akiloff!"

It's not Mya's name, not anyone near me, but I still recognize the name. Most of the boys around me too. Leopold Akiloff has to be the richest man in Five, he's the District's treasurer. Works more closely with the government than even the mayor does. I know his son's a year older than me, I see him studying as quietly as I do sometimes at school. A girl finally pulls herself out of the 17's. She's rail thin, taller than me, but it's the look on her face that says it all.

I don't think I've seen someone that pissed off in a while.

Definitely Vidal's older sister. They've got the same dark hair and sharp face, something calculating underneath it all. But Vidal is quiet and kind from what I know whereas this one looks like she should come with a warning label. No one around her looked that upset. No friends surrounding her, then, just like me. The whole way up to the stage she never stops scowling, and even the escort looks nervous to take her hand and announce her to the rest of the crowd.

No one claps. Big surprise there. Whoever just accidentally got her reaped is probably going to die for it, later on.

I don't even hear the boy's name. I'm watching Isi, up on stage, when it happens. After a moment she looks right at me. I blink, and Mya's looking right at me too.

"Parker Walden?" Those are the words the escort repeats, just as I'm trying to figure out why Isi's picked me out of the crowd, of all people. Mya's still crying. Sobbing, really, the noise loud enough that it's one of the only things I can hear, in the silence of the square. Everyone is looking at me, now.

So much for what history has been dictating.

* * *

 **Laurel Oversnow, 16 years, District Nine Female.**

* * *

I'm having a hard time focusing.

There's a good reason for that, of course. If Austin hadn't chosen to position himself directly across the aisleway from me, then I'd have absolutely no problem looking at the stage and the mayor and everyone else up there, give them my full attention.

The second Austin shows up that all flies out the window. So much for my attempt at taking this seriously like every other year.

Kaia notices, of course, and instantly elbows me hard enough in the ribs that I nearly stumble out into the aisleway.

"Would you quit it?" Kaia hisses.

"I'm not doing anything!"

"There's only so long the two of you can make heart eyes at each other before you. You know."

I most definitely don't know. All I do know is that Kaia is making frustrated, annoyed gestures with her hands that I don't think I want to know the meaning of and Austin is still smiling at me from across the aisle. _She okay_? he mouths and I have to stifle my laughter against my hand. The mayor's speech fades even further into the background. He needs to quit it. I should be paying attention.

"Since when do people have mutual crushes on each other?" Kaia grumbles. "I thought that was a make-believe thing."

To be honest, I kinda did too. Maybe it is foolish to be dancing around each other like this but we're young and maybe foolish is just what we're supposed to be doing right now. Besides, Austin seems content right where we are right now and I'm not about to run headlong into it and ruin it. That's the last thing I need to do. Then Kaia will be even more annoyed.

"Rooke Arvelle!"

I see Austin, across the aisle, swivel his head back towards the group of boys around him, eyes wide. I probably should recognize the name. Austin definitely does. Probably one of his friends, then, but he has tons of those and not a single person in school has a hope in remembering them all. Rooke eventually shuffles his way out, right past Austin. They were maybe three, four people apart at most. He looks like he's keeping it together alright but the longer he looks at the stage it's stunningly clear that he has no idea what the hell he's meant to do once he's up there. If he keeps it together that long.

Austin and the boys around him are still staring after Rooke. I try to catch his eye; he looks upset, and he should be and that's enough to upset me too. Maybe I don't know Rooke personally but either way it seems that Austin is losing someone this year.

It seems like that every year. Last year the girl was someone Kaia knew, one of the older girls that tutored her in history a few months previous. The year before that the class prankster of the fourteen year olds, who had to be dragged up to the stage when he refused to move.

It never ends.

"Laurel Oversnow!"

"What the fuck," is all Kaia manages. Something I feel like I hear her say a rough two dozen times a day, and yet this one sounds like nothing I've heard before.

The tears spill over before I can stop them. The urge to cry didn't even really present itself. One second I'm fine and the next I feel two, three drops wobble off the edge of my chin. All of the boys who had been staring at Rooke, Austin included, are now staring at _me_.

Because like I said. It never ends.

I don't even hear the Peacekeepers start to come up behind me. It's Kaia reaching out for me at the last second that makes me notice, but she's not quick enough. One of the Peacekeeper's hands lock around my upper arm and her hand passes through empty air where I had just been standing as they wrench me out of the section.

They can't swivel me around fast enough. I catch sight of my mom and dad, standing just at the edge of the crowd. Mom is crying too, Dad dangerously close, and that only makes the tears come harder. I can't do this. They can't make me do this, not even as they haul me closer and closer to the stage.

They drop me on the stairs and release my arms, but I don't move. Not like I'd run anyway, where would I even go? The escort is gesturing at me, frantically, smiling far too widely for it to be believable. This is the last thing they wanted. They wanted to see confident, strong tributes. Not my crying and Rooke's barely concealed terror. Suddenly all of the other tribute's reactions the past few year make so little _sense_. I always felt empathy, but now I am them, and I wonder how any of them had the mindset to be so strong about it. This is when sponsors start looking, when I should be at most serious, and yet I can't manage it.

The escort finally reaches down, tired of me just standing there, and pulls me the last few feet up the stairs. I nearly trip over the microphone cord as she practically shoves me into Rooke's side. Evidently she just wants to get this over with as quickly as possible and move onto next year.

Because she's already written the two of us off.

It's only when Rooke's hand locks around my wrist to stop us from colliding that I realize he's shaking nearly as bad as I am. Hiding it better, no surprise there, but he's not pushing me away. Not trying to distance himself from me.

Right now, we're safe. Standing on this stage were in absolutely no danger.

It's only a matter of time, though.

* * *

 **Oeshe Ito, 18 years, District Eleven Female.**

* * *

"Are you seriously still asleep?"

I'm most definitely not asleep, but Quade, still on the other side of the door, thinks so for whatever reason. I was in the kitchen an hour ago, for christ's sake. Come to think of it, _he_ was still asleep then. I am most definitely the superior sibling.

After a solid twenty seconds without an answer, Quade cracks the door open. I'm sitting on the end of my bed, attempting to force my feet into shoes that are a size too small, when he pokes his head in.

"Oh. You're awake."

"Sorry to disappoint you," I say, smiling, and he rolls his eyes.

"You are going to die a terrible death if you wear those," Quade points out, eyeing the heels with mild distaste. I don't think he's really all that concerned about me falling or not. Probably more on the fact that I'm now taller than him wearing them. That, or the fact that he'd be the one getting yelled at to help me up when it inevitably happened.

"Mom said I had to."

"Since when do you listen to what she tells you to do?"

"Touché." I kick the heels off and under my bed, headed for the closet. There's gotta be something in here I can put on my feet, and sure enough I find a flatter pair of shoes almost instantly. And they even _fit_. What a miracle. Quade is still standing in the doorway, shirt buttoned unevenly, but I'm not about to tell him that. Let a random stranger point it out, that's what he gets for not looking in the mirror.

"What are you doing?" I ask finally, when it becomes apparent that he's not leaving.

"Waiting for you."

" _Why_?"

Quade shrugs, and I shrug back. He already knows I'm headed to Chandra's first, because realistically she probably _is_ still asleep and will miss the reaping if I don't go wake her up. If he wants to come with me, he can. I just don't know why he would want to because he hasn't the past five years. Six years in and suddenly he wants to?

Sixteen year olds are weird.

"Okay dweeb, let's go then," I say as I shove past him through my doorway. He bounces quite comically off the door-frame and scowls.

"Man, I hope you get reaped."

I barely hear my mother's chastising voice from the kitchen. Apparently he didn't say that as quietly as he should have. I can't help but cackle as I swing myself down the stairs and around the corner, narrowly avoiding crashing into my mother as I make a break for the door.

"Oeshe! Why aren't you wearing—"

I crash out through the front door before she can finish her sentence. "See you there, Mom!"

Quade's out a minute after me, still managing to scowl. It looks like she at least got to him and attempted to flatten his hair down before he could make it through the kitchen. Now he looks like even more of a dweeb than usual, and that's saying something.

"Do not," he insists, and I smirk and lunge forward, wrapping my arm around his neck. He tries to squirm away, jabbing his hands into my sides, before I emerge victorious, his head tucked into the crook of my elbow.

"You are an absolute menace," he complains, even though I'm pretty sure he let me win to avoid causing more of a scene. I start walking, keeping a firm grip on him.

"What are older sisters for?"

I've seen a lot of older sisters. Girl in my classes or girls at work and none of them are quite like me. Most of them are caring and supportive - and I _am_ , don't get me wrong. Considering Quade's ten times better at everything than me it's not hard to be. I just don't think most older sisters punish their little brothers this much for it.

"How far away is Chandra's again?" Quade grumbles.

"Why? Regretting your decision?"

The deafening silence is enough of an answer. There's enough people already making their way to the square this early that there's a throng of people around us, coming and going and hurrying to make sure everything that needs to be done is done before the Capitol starts parading around the place. A few people give us looks as they pass, probably wondering what the hell kind of torture I'm inflicting on him, but most don't bother. A lot of them are our neighbors, who know by now that Quade's nothing if not used to my antics.

About halfway to Chandra's I release him and he goes stumbling away, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I can't believe you said you hope I get reaped. You're a terrible brother."

"I was kidding!" Quade insists, flailing his arms wildly. He nearly strikes a child in the head for his effort and their parents quickly herd them away, glowering the whole while. I laugh again.

"I'm serious. I was kidding."

"Relax, I know. Besides, it'll be you now instead of me. Karma's a bitch."

I don't want him to get reaped just like he doesn't want me to get reaped, but we've been dysfunctional since day one. I'll probably end up grounded after the reaping for not wearing the damn shoes and Quade will be locked in his own room after being scolded to the high heavens about saying it in the first place.

We fall into a brief silence, nothing but the sounds of our feet scuffing through the dirt.

Quade sighs. "Seriously, how far away is her house?"

I lean over and punch him in the arm.

It's what he deserves.

* * *

As always thanks for the reviews on the last chapter, I appreciate it.

Super long A/Ns are over-rated mostly because I'm on my phone and can't be bothered to type out anything longer.

Until next time.


	6. If You Love Me

Goodbyes, Part One.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

To the surprise of no one, Kali's the first through the door.

It's not going to be that dramatic. I've accepted that. The two of us said our goodbyes, the real ones, throughout all the twilight hours yesterday until the sun broke the horizon this morning. Right now, she's only here, her family just outside, because there's no point to letting me sit alone for the next few minutes until my partner decides he's done.

Besides, I'm not stupid. I know that you can train your whole life for this and often times it never matters at all. District One hasn't had a victor in thirteen years now, the longest stretch for over a hundred years. If the most prepared person won every year then we'd have double the amount of victors.

Realistically, this could be the last time I ever hug Kali. The last time I'm ever able to hold onto one of the greatest things I think life has ever let me had.

I know she realizes that too. And despite herself, there are tears in her eyes. But she's always been the emotional one.

"Sorry," she chokes out, laughing. "I'm being stupid. I cried last night too so I thought I'd be fine now."

I know she did, when I excused myself to the bathroom and came back to her slightly red-eyed, even though she was smiling. I knew it had to be bad, because her parents actually let us stay in the same room for once instead of banishing us, laughing in their own right, to our own beds.

I owe them everything. _Her_ everything. And everyone knows that.

I press my lips against her cheek, because she doesn't seem inclined to move further apart for me to do anything else.

"You're good," I inform her, and she nods, wiping under her eyes. When she steps back she takes a deep breath to compose herself, still smiling.

"Man, I am gonna have the most badass girlfriend in the world when you come back."

"Aren't I already the most badass girlfriend in the world?" I complain, and she makes a face at me. I think it's a competition most days for who gets that title. We've both been training since we were young and it's only me this year instead of her because she's a year younger. She's already the top prospect for the 161st. If I don't come back, she'll be volunteering next year.

Kali's already told me, her family, the entire world, that if I win she's not doing it. Some would say that's years of work going to waste, but I don't think she cares.

And, frankly, if I come back and she tried to leave me less than a year later, I wouldn't be having it anyway.

"Alright, let the family in now, time hog." It's odd, nowadays, that it's not just her family, but mine too. That a group of people who would be strangers to me otherwise have become some of the people I care most about in my life. It's been so long, since the accident that took my parents. Since people stopped trying to explain to me who they were because I had no memories of them anyway.

It's been a much shorter period of time since Kali's family took me in, since I stopped living wherever I could.

In those months I've been happier than ever before.

Her birth family, mine adoptive, steps into the room. Her sisters, Azaria and Isolde, who both embrace me like they grew up with me. Isolde is teary-eyed too, easily the most emotional of the family, but still forcing a smile onto her face for all of our sakes. Azaria jostles me a little bit, and says quietly, into my ear, that I better come back or hell is going to be had.

I may not have any memories of my parents, young as I was, but I know what family feels like. What it should look like. I'm standing in the middle of it.

"Good luck, sweetheart," her mother says, arms wrapped tight around my shoulders. Her father looks a little misty-eyed himself, which is almost startling. Ever since the day I met him he's been mostly hard-eyed, grown warmer over time. Now he tugs me into a hug that I thought, all those months ago, that I'd never be on the reciprocating end of.

If I wasn't one of the calmest human beings in the world, I know I'd be crying right now.

It's over sooner than I want it to be. When the family leaves, giving us those last few seconds together, Kali will do nothing but hold my hand from a distance, like she knows she can't be any closer. I squeeze it back as hard as I can. Right now, holding tight to her hand, I'm not nervous. I've never been nervous about the prospect of this, of what could happen to me. I could be dead in a few day's time, but right now, that's not what matters.

What matters right now is the girl standing in front of me, and how I know I wouldn't be here right now if I hadn't met her.

"I love you," she says.

"See you later," I respond, and she laughs. "Now go, before you make me get all weepy."

She grabs my other hand, quickly, and leans over to kiss me. It's over as soon as it's begun.

"Love you too," I whisper, and she nods, avoiding my eyes, before she's gone out the door.

The room feels too empty with them all gone. But it's only a matter of time. I know I'm more than big enough to fill up all the space in the world, that my capabilities are there. By so many rights I should be a broken teenager, filled with hate for the earth and all the people on it for taking what should have been my life away from me. Things like that may not happen in District One very often, but it happened to me, and I'm okay with that.

There's no need to worry about it now. Not when I know I'm standing right where I should be.

* * *

 **Camden Kershaw, 18 years, District Seven Male.**

* * *

Even I'm not prepared for the outburst.

I know no one in my family saw it coming. That's, sickly enough, part of the reason I kept it from them in the first place. At first I wanted to test them, to see just how little they paid attention. To see if they'd recognize the fatigue, the bruised knuckles - ask questions, eventually, when they did notice.

It never happened.

There's a part of me that _wants_ to feel bad, deep down inside. Mom's been crying since before she even walked in and Evie started up about two minutes ago. Lydia's been standing in the corner, arms wrapped around herself and staring somewhere around my knees, longer than Evie's been crying.

I think it's Dad who's the worst, though. Hasn't said a word, is looking at me like I'm a puzzle that he just unboxed for the first time. And maybe now I am. They never saw any of this.

They never expected to see me willingly walking on that stage, either.

"There's no way you can take this back," Evie says tearfully. She looks so much smaller than fifteen right now. I still remember her face, when they called the girl's name. She had turned back around, caught my eye. She hadn't looked happy, exactly; the girl they took was the same age as her. But she had given me a nervous little smile and a thumbs up, none the wiser that a few seconds later I'd be walking past her.

She had tried to catch my eye then, too. She had nearly stepped out into the aisleway after me. Probably would have if one of her friends hadn't grabbed her arm and pulled her back, shock written across their own face.

It was the whole crowd, looking up there at me like they were seeing me for the first time.

Just like my family was.

I never wanted it to be like this, is the issue. I never wanted to go to these measures just to get someone to spare more than two seconds for me.

Without even knowing it my family pushed me to the brink of this.

Well, they know it now.

There's a knock at the door and a Peacekeeper pokes their head in. Evie lets out a choked little sob and darts forward to hug me before they can get a word in edgewise, arms wrapped crushingly tight around my middle. She doesn't even let me hug her myself before she pulls back. Dad grabs her by the arm, wrapped around her shoulder, and guides her out of the room. My mother follows immediately after, staring at me, still crying.

Nothing's said, though. She doesn't step forward to hug me, doesn't tell me she loves me like I'm actually her son. I don't think she even realizes.

But that's the issue. They just don't _realize_.

The Peacekeeper is still standing there expectantly but Lydia doesn't move. Her fingernails are digging so hard into her side her fingers are white with the pressure.

"What did we do wrong?" Lydia asks, finally, voice small. Like Evie she seems hardly there, but this is my big sister. The girl I looked up to when I was little and followed around even when she pestered me not to. Now she's looking up at me like we were never those people to begin with.

"It's what you didn't do, Lyds," I explain, but she shakes her head. A few tears slip from her eyes.

"Don't. Don't you dare put this on us. If you were so desperate for attention, or whatever this is— if you were that insecure within your own family, then say that! Don't— don't _kill yourself_ because you don't know what else to do. And don't tell me going through this is worth the satisfaction you feel right now!"

"So that's what you really think?" I ask. "You think I'm done for."

She swallows, hands scrabbling uselessly at her sides. "I don't know what to think anymore."

Before it came out of her mouth, I would have wanted her to come forward like Evie did. To hug me and eventually give me a second to reciprocate. Maybe even wish me good luck, if she was feeling particularly optimistic. To do anything that would make me feel like someone gave a damn about what I did and what happened to me from here on out.

She reaches a hand out and I back up as far as I can in this tiny, god awful room, the backs of my legs brushing against the couch. She stops instantly, eyes widening.

"Go, then, if you really think that."

Her face I remember too, when she saw me walk up the steps and realized I wasn't joking. The horror, and the confusion, and the other people around her slowly putting the pieces together.

She knows I'm not joking now either.

She edges around the Peacekeeper quicker than I can keep track of, shoes clicking against the tiled hallway as she gets further and further away. Until eventually I can't hear it anymore, and it's like my family was never here at all.

That's a feeling I'm starting to get used to, these days.

* * *

 **Houston Harrels, 12 years, District Ten Male.**

* * *

Hopefully what I did was enough.

I won't lie, the terror that overwhelmed me initially when I heard my name called was like nothing I've ever felt before. The sun was burning hot in the sky and yet I'd never felt colder as I took those few steps forward out of my section.

I don't know Kelsea, not personally, but she had looked just as terrified as I had felt in that moment, and it only felt right. And maybe she won't want to be my ally, my friend, but I know she appreciated it as much as she could. The whole time up to the stage she hadn't let go of my hand, though the initial crushing, clammy grip of her fingers had eventually faded into something softer. More calm.

It definitely helped, I think. I know it helped me.

It didn't however help Mom and Dad, who both seem to be close to hysterics, though I think Mom's going to get there first. Dad's too busy trying to hold both of the twins and console Mom at the same time. Maybe it really hasn't even registered for him yet.

With Mom's hands framing my face, tears streaming down her own, it definitely _feels_ real. But there's only so many times she can call me her baby before she has to let me go.

Besides, I'm not. They've got the twins to worry about now.

"Don't worry, everything's gonna be fine." It's hard to say, but I manage a smile all the same, and her face twists.

"I don't know how you're managing this so well, sweetheart," she says after a moment, after what I assume is her vigorously trying to compose herself. No matter how hard she's trying I can tell this is killing her, on the inside. Or maybe that's just how well she's handling it. Usually it's the kid crying and the parent comforting them, not the other way around.

"You— you did a good thing, with that girl back there. Helping her out. You two may not win any points in the height department, but you started well."

I look at Dad, and while he looks proud he also looks more nervous. I can practically feel what he's thinking. Me sticking with Kelsea probably isn't my best interest. Probably isn't in _either_ of our best interests, if we're being honest here. A pair of nervous, scrawny kids from Ten together aren't going to make it far without outside intervention and we won't get that as we are.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm right. But most kids don't go and offer their hands to their partner as a sign of peace and trust, either. We're already distinguishing ourselves from the rest, and I did it without even realizing.

Maybe the Capitol will see enough in that to keep us alive.

"You don't need to worry about me," I tell Mom. She's got both of my hands, now, crouched in front of me because if she sits next to me on the couch I'm honestly quite convinced they'll have to drag her off of me.

I hold my arms out, though, against my better judgement and when she reaches forward to hug me it sure feels a lot like that. For the first time I feel a lump rise in my throat. This is probably it. The last real moment I'll have with them and I can't stop thinking about how I should've hugged them before I went to my section this morning. No tesserae, no nothing. And yet here we are.

"You gotta let Dad hug me too," I joke lightly, but she still holds on for at least another thirty seconds before she leans back, and even that must've been too soon for her.

It's difficult to hug Dad while he's holding onto the twins but I make do. Ilvin is fast asleep on his shoulder but Beka is wide awake and staring around curiously. She's ever seen a place this nice in all of her two years - no wonder she's not focused on me at all. Then again, she doesn't even know what's going on. She still can't even say my name properly without butchering it somehow. I guess that's little siblings for you, though, and I was supposed to be an only child. One was unexpected, two was even worse, and yet I couldn't trade them for the world.

All those dreams of being the older brother they one day cherished and looked up to down the drain.

Dad's hand is shaking when it clasps around the small of my back and I swallow. One of Beka's hands turns to grip the collar of my shirt and I lean up to kiss her on the cheek, and then the top of Ilvin's head.

It's when I'm still hugging him that I feel Mom come up behind me and then I'm in the middle of a group hug that we haven't really had, since the twins were born. Since they spent so many hours of the day worrying about them instead of me. It never bugged me, not until right now and I realize we should've done it so much more.

"Be careful," she whispers. Thankfully, there's no sound outside the room. No Peacekeepers to worry about yet, to wake Ilvin up as they storm inside the room.

"I will."

"Promise me."

I can't promise that. I shouldn't. The word _careful_ isn't synonymous with what I'm headed into.

That still doesn't stop the words from spilling out anyway, regardless of what I want. "I promise."

* * *

 **Zion Lancaster, 18 years, District Eleven Male.**

* * *

No matter who tells who to calm down, no one does.

Despite all of the crying and general nonsense Dad is holding it together pretty well. I feel similar tears in my own eyes, a few that have already spilled out against my control. Willa's sitting on one side, holding my hand and Maren's on the other, staring at the wall. Farley's in the corner of the room, though mentally I'd say he's probably anywhere but here right now. It's Brin that's hurting me the most, no surprise there. She's pressed up against Dad's side, crying silently, arms wrapped around herself.

"You guys are just making this worse for me." The worst attempt at a joke I've ever made. No one laughs, or even bothers cracking a smile. Willa squeezes my hand a little tighter. She looks worried. Terrified, even.

I guess that makes sense. Once I'm gone she'll be the oldest. She was always the most like Mom, so despite how morbid it really sounds it's fitting in the very least.

Things have just been so hard, since she died. And now that I'll be gone I don't really know how they'll manage. It was always going to be harder, once I was out of contention and could no longer take any tesserae. But now?

Now it doesn't seem feasible.

Willa will try her damnedest to keep things going. Dad too, of course, and Farley's almost at the stage where places will start taking him up on his offers to work. But Maren and Brin are still years away from that - closer to the reaping than anything else.

I thought by taking the brunt of it that I could protect them, at the end of the day. Now it seems like I've only made it worse.

The worst part is, there's not a chance in hell I'm coming back from this.

That's not what most people would say, I know. I'm tall and strong enough that I could handle most people. I've got something in my head other than rocks. That's enough, at the end of the day. Being physically capable and mentally capable, though, are two completely different things in my world. The thought of doing what the other victors have done...

I can't make myself believe I have it in me to do those things.

Because I don't.

Everyone here knows that.

"You're going to try, right?" Maren asks quietly. The worst part is, I don't know how to lie to them. Dad always said not to. Even when I wanted to protect them from the worst things in life lying to them was never the right alternative. So I can't lie to them, but I'm too hesitant to speak the truth out-loud.

I don't know if I'll have to, though. The look in Maren's eyes is saying she already knows. Too perceptive for an eleven year old, if you ask me.

She leans over and hugs me tight. My hand is still clutched in Willa's, so it's a little awkward, but I know she doesn't care.

"Come here," I gesture to Brin, and she leaves Dad's side and squishes her way in-between us all, face pressed into my shoulder. Willa leans her head on my shoulder, sighing. In defeat, it seems.

"So you're not even going to try," Farley says flatly. He still hasn't left the far wall; to be honest, it doesn't look like he's going to.

"Of course I'll try—"

"But not really, though. You're not going to kill anyone."

We all know what that means. If I don't kill anyone, if I refuse to, then there's no way they let me out of there alive. Not unless some sort of catastrophic accident happens, and those are getting fewer and further in-between every year. What kind of show is that? Not a good one, by any means. And that's the only kind of show I'm prepared to give them.

Farley gives a terse nod, pressing his lips together. "Alright, then."

When he heads for the door I don't stop him. Farley's never been particularly emotional as is, and right now he's _angry_ , of all things. Whether it's at me or the reaping or the world in general, I don't know.

Dad looks torn, between me or him, and I stand up to hug him. "Go after him. It's fine."

He's shaking too. I know Dad's had it rough, losing Mom and trying to make sure we all weren't starving when we went to bed at night. It hasn't been perfect, not even close, but he's _tried_. I have to give him credit for that. Above all he loves us more than anything, all five of us. I know if he could he'd trade places with me right now. I wouldn't want him to, though. Despite everything he still has a lot longer left in him.

When the door clicks shut behind him I feel a few more tears slip out. Maren attaches herself to my back and Brin resumes her position by my side. Willa comes up too, after a second, and offers me a smile that's too sad to be reassuring.

"Take care of everyone, please," I whisper. Not loud enough to be heard. Maren and Brin still have their faces in my shirt. Willa takes a deep, steadying breath and then nods, but even as she does it I see the tears fill her eyes. Something she hasn't allowed herself to do yet.

I grab her too, pulling them all back to me, and wonder how long they'll all have, after I'm gone.

* * *

In news completely unrelated to this particular chapter, I am way too ahead on this story and I never thought I'd be able to say that in my life. It's a Christmas miracle. Again, thanks for the reviews and all the nice comments thus far! You guys are awesome.

Until next time.


	7. Becoming Human

Goodbyes, Part Two.

* * *

 **Farren Laboy, 17 years, District Six Female.**

* * *

At least I'm not crying.

I feel like I'm going to throw up, which can't be good. I probably will, once I set foot on that train and realize they're not letting me back off. My family's long since left, because I knew the longer they sat here the worse I was going to get. All my friends, too, what felt like half the school here tramping in and out of the doors. Now it's only Clare, who sits next to me in stony-faced silence. Also at a loss for words.

That's almost as big of a shock as the reaping itself.

"You can do this," Clare says, out of the blue. She looks over at me and her eyes are shining, but I nod.

"Yeah. Of course."

It's not like I have a choice in the matter. Either I lay down and die now or decide I'm at least going to attempt to put up a fight. And I don't think I know how to lay down and die.

"I mean, Emori Arker did it last year, right? And she's the same age as us."

Both Clare and I know that's not exactly true. That was probably more Capitol interference than not - half the District didn't know what they were more terrified of, that girl living or that girl dying and some new hell being unleashed upon us all. Those six kills, though. Those we're all on her. I can't imagine myself being capable of something of that magnitude, but it doesn't have to be that much. More often than not it's much, much less than that.

"I can do this," I repeat, more firmly this time. Clare smiles encouragingly and leans in to hug me again. I know right now she's trying to force herself into much the same mindset, so she doesn't worry me.

"I'll be okay," I say, softer this time, when I feel her start to sniffle into my shoulder. She nods, and when she pulls back there are tears dripping down her cheeks. The first real sign of terror from either of us. It feels like I should be crying, like I should be mourning my own death or something like that. But lesser kids have done it. Why can't I?

It's so, so hard to let her go. I see her hesitate before she shuts the door, and it's all I can do to smile. If this is her last memory of me I at least want it to be a good one.

It's not thirty seconds later when the curtain separating the two visitation rooms is pulled apart. That's Six for you, though. Can't even afford a wall to give the tributes some privacy before the vast majority of them are shipped off to die. I don't know if that's protocol or not. But then again, most of the tributes that are shoved in here probably don't know each other. Not at all.

Casper hooks his chin around the edge of the curtain and leans against the wall. "This is real shitty, huh?"

I cover my mouth, nearly wanting to smile at the sheer stupidity of all of this. I'm not close with him, not really. We're nowhere near best friends, not like Clare and I are. But I know that he hates school enough that he spends more time sitting outside than he does in his own classes. Hell, half the time his seat is empty and no one's any the wiser as to why. I probably talk to more than seventy-five percent of the school and he probably hardly knows who any of them are.

"The shittiest," I eventually agree, and pat the edge of the chair next to me. We can hardly both fit on it but he takes a seat anyway. He looks tired, and like I said, I don't know enough about him to really know why. He leans his chin into his hand and after a moment I lean into his side. It doesn't feel right, not like one of my siblings or my parents, but right now it has to be enough. Besides, he doesn't seem to care.

I feel like the Peacekeepers should have come to collect us by now. Judging by how quickly he appeared, Casper's room has been devoid of other people besides himself for a while now. The second Clare left I expected them to have us move on.

"We're both done for, you realize that right?" Casper asks me. I don't... I don't necessarily think that's true. We have each other, at least. He wouldn't have bothered coming over here if he didn't realize there was some sort of connection to go off of.

"You don't know that for sure," I tell him. I don't think I sound as confident as I want to, but it's leagues above where he's at right now. He peers down at me, and then rolls his eyes.

"Yeah," he agrees, although I suspect it's reluctant. "I don't."

There's a lot I want to ask him. About how long he sat there, possibly alone or just in silence, while he listened to my family babble around me and me whisper assurances to my best friend. Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I never heard much from his side.

Speaking of, I hear the stomping of boots outside the room. Looks like they're finally here. I smooth out my skirt and rise to my feet. He's nearly as tall as I am sitting down, which should be discouraging, but I'm not going to be scared of him. I said I didn't know the magnitude of the things I was capable of. But maybe with help, maybe together...

"You ready?" I ask.

"No," he says flatly. "Do I have a choice?"

Just like I knew I didn't have one the second I got on-stage, the realization is beginning to hit him now.

We may not have many choices.

But maybe, just maybe, we have a chance.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

The way he's acting you'd think Jericho had gotten reaped instead of me. **  
**

He's said a total of six words since my grandparents herded our parents back into the hallway in an attempt at consoling them. Judging from the noise coming from the other side of the door, I don't think it's working.

Then again, Jericho isn't much better off. His face is still buried in his hands, and he's sitting next to me on the couch like he's planning on never leaving it. It's weird, because my brother's always been the upbeat, positive one, and now he looks anything but.

Not that I'm any better.

"I was done this year and next year you were supposed to be," he says, eventually, although it's muffled through his hands. I can't imagine how he feels. He's got the freedom of knowing he's finally escaped the Games but gets the exchange of me going in instead.

I'm not even surprised.

I think the people around me expected a more violent reaction. Hell, I expected a more violent reaction out of _myself_. My life's been going in the last direction I really wanted it to in the past while, though. This is just the cherry on top of it all.

Turns out I'm wrong, actually. The real cherry on top is Thane opening the door.

I'm on my feet before I even really register that it's him, and Jericho leaps up even faster than I do. Before I've even decided if I'm in the mood to deal with this Jericho has crossed across the room and has Thane by the shoulders. It would probably be easier to bodily shove him out the door if he wasn't the smaller of the two.

"Jer, it's fine," I sigh.

"Are you serious?"

"I can deal with it. I'll be fine."

Thane, miraculously, still hasn't opened his mouth. Jericho gives me an _are you fucking kidding me_ look, but seems to realize pretty quickly that I'm not joking.

"I'll be right outside. And I'm coming back in once he leaves."

If you could set someone on fire with your eyes, my brother would be doing it right now. I don't blame him. He's the only one that really knows, about Thane and me. Sure, my parents have met him and my grandparents still consider him my nice boyfriend that lives a little down the road, but they don't really know.

If they really knew, I don't think we'd be here right now.

I've spent two months now trying to get away from him. Trying to cast him as far out of my life as I possibly could, and every single time he comes crawling back in like the cockroach he most definitely is.

He just won't quit.

Before I know it he's crossed the entire room and has one hand locked white-knuckled around my wrist and the other grabbing my chin, forcing me to look up at him. Long ago the fear would've bubbled up, spilling out like it did the first time he grabbed me and left bruises on my arm.

I don't give him that satisfaction anymore.

"You're going to come back," he says. The first words out of his mouth and they're as low and gravelly as always, and just like always hearing it is like waiting for the knife to hit. And it never does, not really. Whatever this is to him, this game, it's no fun if I'm dead.

"Am I now?" I ask him. If we're giving where credit is due for him keeping this under such wraps for so long, then I deserve it for how undeniably calm I sound.

It must not be what he wanted to hear, because he looks dangerously close to hitting me. Probably would, if he knew there weren't ten odd people in the hallway outside. Finally, he lets go of my jaw but his hand is still tightening on my wrist. It'll be bruised as all hell by tomorrow morning.

Not that anyone in the Capitol will care.

"Of course you are," he says, and I watch all the anger get forced back, like a wave being pulled back out to sea. There's no use to all of this charade if someone else besides my brother notices.

"I'll see you soon, alright?" Thane continues. A smile creeps along his face and his hand slips down into mine, feather-light, squeezing.

I smile back. "Of course."

The second Thane's out the door, Jericho's back in, eyes appraising. No surface wounds. Not yet, anyway. Just like everything, it'll take a while to show. Just like the innocent hand-holding and kisses took months to reveal what was really happening underneath, and by then it was far, far too late to do anything about it.

Jericho wraps his arms around me, holding me tight. "I'm sorry."

I barely hear it, and it's what he's been echoing for months, because I won't let him close enough to this situation to really help me out. No use in Thane going after him too. But I tighten my own arms around his back regardless, because he's trying.

It's more than I can say about most people.

"I'm not," I respond, because it's the truth. I know I'm not in the wrong, that in a twisted sort of way this has made me a stronger person. I don't blink in the eye of fear, or danger, because I probably wouldn't be alive if I did. I stand up and take everything I can because I don't know what else to do.

Maybe all of that's a good thing, now.

Because if Thane thinks me coming back is a good thing, then he's got hell coming for him.

* * *

 **Olympia Kuidas, 13 years, District Eight Female.  
**

* * *

It shouldn't have been me. I was supposed to have it all. **  
**

Maybe not everything I wanted, of course. I'm not under the impression that Eight was going to give me everything I wanted in life. To be honest, I don't think anyone here can afford to think like that.

I thought it would be better than _this_ , at least.

I watch in silence, trying to blink back the tears, as my mother pushes my father out of the room, the rickety wheelchair creaking as they cross the threshold of the doorway. He turns, at the last second, and offers the most encouraging smile he can. I don't know, at this point, if anyone has the strength to do anything else. Or maybe, after everything that's happened, he's not trying to cling to something that doesn't exist.

I can still remember the days, only months ago now, when everything was just alright. When I didn't have to worry about being cold or hungry or taking out tesserae because my mom couldn't support us all alone. My siblings are too young for that, two and five years away from the Games, respectively. It all fell on me. She told me I didn't have to but what kind of kid would I be, if I didn't at least try?

Even then I hardly thought anything of it. A few extra slips in the bowl, so what?

But that was until an hour ago, when I heard my name called and it was like I was in the square and a thousand miles away, all at once.

I'm picking at the ends of my dress, the threads starting to come unraveled between my fingers, when the door creaks open again. For a second I think it's one of my siblings sneaking back in, still confused as to why I'm even in here in the first place.

"Hey, kid."

I watch Aveza Cairnes walk into the room and it's that feeling all over again, like I'm watching myself through a magnifying glass not quite understanding what's going on. She's stronger than me and half a foot taller, though I don't think that's particularly impressive given my height, and I can't fathom at all why she's in my room right now.

"Can I sit?"

I nod. She takes a seat on the ottoman in front of me and kicks both of her heels off, crossing her legs.

"Not expecting me?" Aveza asks. I think that's as close to the truth as we'll get.

"I just thought it would be... anyone but you, really. No offense. Don't mentors usually want the tributes with the best chance?"

"Who says that's not you?" Aveza points out. "The fact alone that you didn't cry when they called your name says volumes. _I_ almost cried."

 _Almost_ is a whole lot different than did, though, and even if Aveza had cried no one would've cared. She shot seven people off of the clifftops of her arena, watched them tumble down to their deaths if the bolt she put in their chest didn't kill them first. What am I supposed to say to her? That when I finally learned who she was and what she did I was blatantly terrified of her? That right now I'm still not sure if I should be or not?

Besides, the tributes from some of the lower Districts are already starting to appear. I've seen what some of them look like.

They look a lot like Aveza did, four years ago.

Nothing like me, right now.

"Okay, I'll be blatantly honest with you," Aveza says. "You're right. It's usually not me. Della, if anything. But there's a reason kids like you don't usually win. Because someone looks at you and tells you to run. To hide. To do everything in your power to stay away from the thick of things. Is that who you are?"

That's the furthest thing from what I am. And I never planned on letting someone else dictate what I got in life or where I ended up before today. So why would I start now?

"You'll help me?" I ask.

"Of course. What do you think I'm here for?"

I'm not surprised, after hearing what she had to say, but it's still a relief. No matter how willing I am to try I'll get nowhere without some direction. Even if the competition I've seen looks positively terrifying there has to be others like me. People willing to defy their odds because they know they're being robbed of the life they so rightfully deserve.

"You really think I have a chance?" I wonder. Aveza shrugs and picks her heels up off the floor. When she stands up from the ottoman, bare feet sinking into the carpet, she doesn't look like the same victor that was on the stage. To be honest, she really doesn't look like one at all.

Maybe, come a year's time, that could be me. A tribute could be looking at me much the same way, wondering where the divide between human and victor lies. Wondering above all else how that line was crossed in that first place.

I think, with time, I can figure that out.

I was right. It shouldn't have been me that was reaped.

But it should be me that wins.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

I'm not even in the room before, apparently, all hell breaks loose.

I can hear Beckett at the other end of the hallway before I even see him. It'll take our parents and Ilara a minute or two longer to fight their way through the crowd to get here, but my brother was moving out of the 18's before I had even properly left the stage. Most of my friends, too, the ones that were able to escape the initial crush. They're just behind me, edging as close as they possibly can without getting in the Peacekeeper's way. Clement's in the lead but Ellis and Austin are just behind him and I can rapidly see Viera trying to push her way through the onslaught of other people without getting crushed.

The Peacekeeper stops just outside the door, hand still unbelievably tight on my shoulder. Could he lighten up a bit?

"You're not all allowed in the room. We're shortening the visits. Family only."

Viera opens her mouth and Ellis slaps his hand over it just quick enough to muffle whatever obscenity she was about to spit at the Peacekeeper. He still doesn't look all that impressed, probably could've guessed whatever she was going to say wasn't going to be nice.

"Since when?" Austin asks, and now he looks even more unimpressed. If I had to guess, since when probably means he just decided that right now.

"It's fine, guys," I announce. "Just hug me and get it over with."

"It's not fine," Viera grumbles but she pushes her way past the boys and hugs me anyway, practically crushing the Peacekeeper's arm between us.

I can't even begin to explain how much it hurts. How much it hurts not to just lose it right here. Even if I want to that's not what all the people here deserve. I'm sure my friends don't want to see me have a complete and total mental breakdown just minutes before they most likely never see me again. Besides, I've said time and time again how sweet it would be to get out of Nine. See what the rest of the world had to offer. So what if I didn't necessarily mean it like this.

"I'll bring you back a souvenir," I tell her, and she scoffs into my shoulder. When she lets go of me she's replaced instantly by Ellis, and then Austin and Clement, and even though they know I'm joking they don't chastise me for it. Normally they would, but I don't think anyone has the frame of mind to be concerned about it right now.

They're not even gone before Beckett's apparently managed to ward off anyone trying to stop him from continuing on. My brother pops up and wraps an arm around my shoulders and that's enough, finally, to jostle the Peacekeeper away.

"All good, little bro?"

"Just peachy," I inform him. "Would be better if they would just let me in the room instead of making me stand in the hallway."

There was nowhere near this much fuss for Laurel. She's already been in her own room for a few minutes now. I reckon the Peacekeeper would me giving me a dirty look if he still wasn't wearing that weird helmet, even as he opens the door and ushers us inside.

The noise fades away into the hallway as the door clicks shut. Beckett turns until he can put both his hands on my shoulders and stares at me.

"How you really doing?"

There aren't enough words in the universe, I don't think. It's only going to get worse when Mom and Dad finally show up and Ilara realizes that she's losing me a year before she even hits her first reaping.

"I'm alive?" I manage. "That's a good start, considering."

"Don't think like that."

"What else am I supposed to think about?" I ask. "It's kinda the _only_ thing I'm thinking about. Help me out."

I don't really hear anything my brother says. I can still hear Laurel crying, clear as day, because I think the realization hit her harder than it did me up on the stage. Maybe there are other things to think about; the things I'll see and the people I'll meet but my impending, blinking death is really the only thing currently hanging over my head. Anything else seems insignificant.

It _does_ get worse when our parents finally show up, apparently not as willing as Beckett is to shove the crowd aside to get here. Ilara leaps into my arms instantly, quivering like a leaf and they both wrap their arms around me in a way that I haven't felt since I was little, younger than Ilara at eleven right now. It makes me feel like an infant, like I really have no shot at all.

I don't already want people making me feel that way.

"I'll be okay," I breathe, and Ilara sniffles against my shoulder. "Just— just have some faith in me. Please."

If this, what's happening right now, is proof of anything, it's proof that you can't control everything around you. My family and my friends and the outcome can't be contained to one little box, just like I can't either. I always wondered if Nine was really it for me, if despite all of the love I had here there was something else still waiting.

The Peacekeeper's hand is still like a phantom on my shoulder, Laurel's trembling wrist underneath my fingers, and I will myself to stop shaking.

I'll be okay. I have to be.

Whether I come out alive or not is entirely the question.

* * *

Part 4 of these characters gave me way too many ideas, what have you guys done to me, etc etc.

Lots of reviews or not I'm like genuinely enjoying writing this (a concept) and hope everyone else is enjoying it as well!

Until next time.


	8. Building Empires

Train Rides, Part One.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

The escort won't stop staring at me.

I'm thinking it may have something to do with the fact that all she'd been talking about since we got on the train was cracking open a particularly special brand of chilled wine, and now I have the bottle she'd so been looking forward to pressed up against my rapidly blackening eye.

To say she looks irritated is an understatement.

I don't know who looks most likely to crack first - her, or Ronan and Theo, who both look like they're about to burst out laughing any second. Costa's sitting on the arm of the couch, too, although I'm not even sure why she's here when we've both already got mentors. Regardless she keeps looking between the two of us, one the bomb that's like to explode.

It's sure not me. I'm very calm.

"Here."

"Oh, thank you, Rodrik, that's lovely!" The escort sounds deliriously happy right now. Though I think, to be honest, she's more excited about the possibility of getting her wine back. He's standing just behind my back, hand outstretched to offer an ice pack that he got from god knows where. He looks so damn earnest it's almost stupid.

"Rory's fine, I—"

"Yeah, thanks, _Rodrik_ ," I interrupt, and take the ice pack. He looks a bit affronted at that but takes the wine bottle out of my other hand and offers it back to the escort, who promptly grabs it and disappears.

Theo lets out a barely contained wheeze. "This year is going to be so good."

I'm honestly inclined to agree with that, if the reaping was any indication. Maybe they should be slightly more worried, considering my sister was their chosen volunteer and she's now sitting at home with a broken nose, and their other tribute has a face far, far too nice for murder.

Speaking of, he's still looking at me like I'm going to bite him. Fair enough.

I drop my legs off the couch and pat the empty space. "Go for it."

Nobody really seems _concerned_. Not a single victor in the past fifteen years and a Career system that's rapidly falling apart, and they seem to be doing alright. Maybe Malia wouldn't see it that way, but I sure do.

Maybe it was the anxiety, or maybe the trainers saw some sort of stupid foreshadowing, but it should've been me instead of her all along. But nobody believed that. Not even our mother did. It turns out it doesn't matter what people believe as long as you take the matter into your own hands.

Considering I still have that chunk of my sister's hair in my pocket, I'd say I did the job pretty damn well.

Not that Rodrik, Rory, whatever the hell his name is, would really appreciate knowing that.

He's still watching me, carefully. I lift the ice pack off my eye and he makes a face.

"It cannot be that bad," I insist. She only got a good hit in once or twice. I hit her far more than that, in all the places that counted. Maybe because I imagined doing it the second she stepped out into the aisle-way and she didn't see it coming at all.

"It's pretty bad." He still looks concerned. Maybe it is worse than I'm imagining.

"Don't look so worried. It's only my face. At least it's not yours. Now that'd be a tragedy."

That's all it takes for a flush to creep up his neck, but to be fair, I'm serious. Maybe District Four really does have different water. If so, I think that somehow Malia's gotten a hold of more of it than I have. What's the good in having a twin if they're still better looking than you? Malia's gotten _everything_ , the love and adoration and the boyfriends, but she won't have this. Maybe that's why I feel so victorious the redder he gets, when Costa points a finger at him and snickers in triumph as well.

"You guys are all terrible," he says flatly, but the embarrassment is still there.

"Get used to it," I fire back. I don't think I'm terrible, not really. But if it's enough to keep him away, then it might just be worth it. I've seen him, and I've seen some of the others reaped, and I just don't think it's possible. I know how slim the pickings were for the boys this year - he may have been chosen and he may be able to fight but he's not really a Career. Not mentally, anyway. It seems like that's happening far too often, the past few years. No wonder no Careers are winning.

But then again, have any of these Careers really been like me?

I get up from the couch. The recaps are re-playing on the television again; no point in sticking around for it.

"You don't think we should ... talk?" Rory asks. It does suit him better, I'll admit. "About anything?"

"Don't think there's a point," I admit. Unnecessarily cruel, maybe, but is there any point in giving him hope? Probably not. And he looks wounded, he really does, but I don't think that's gonna be enough to stop me from walking away. Think, anyway. He better not pull anything.

"I'll be in my room if you guys need anything!" I call over my shoulder. "Thanks again for the ice!"

Rory gives me a half-hearted thumbs up and then apparently tries to sink bodily into the couch, hands over his face. I'm not even out the door yet when I see Theo get up to pour himself a drink, crossing over to clap a hand on Rory's shoulder as he does so.

"Man, good luck. You're gonna need it with that one."

I can't help but laugh.

* * *

 **Casper Tolson, 17 years, District Six Male.**

* * *

This will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but I can't sleep.

Considering I should probably get help that I can't find nor afford anyway for being a perpetual insomniac, at least I'm used to it. Expected it, really. With every other stress of the world on top of that I never even bothered laying down.

Figures. Last night I got the first full night of sleep I've had in a while, and now I can't at all.

I've considered waking Farren for a while now, because she told me we could talk about anything and be there for each other if we needed to. But she's a normal human being who probably needs eight hours of sleep to properly function, and I feel too bad to actually do it. That leads to me pacing back and forth in front of her door for twenty minutes before I eventually manage to wander ten feet off, down the hall, and sit down.

I could go back to my room. I could go back to the dining cart, even, and sit there.

I don't want to get up.

When I hear a door click open, I close my eyes. So I probably did wind up waking Farren up, accidentally or not.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Not Farren.

I can hardly even see Emori, standing at the other end of the hall, because of how dark it is. Somehow, though, I can imagine the look on her face. Something crossed between irritated and genuinely confused. And what am I supposed to say? I don't even have an answer for that.

"Are you going to get up?" Emori asks after a minute of silence. I shake my head, whether she sees it or not.

"No. I'm going to sit here until I fuse myself to this fucking wall."

"Unfortunately that takes longer than the amount of time you have left."

"Did you just make an ill-timed joke about me dying?" I ask incredulously. She snorts.

"I mostly meant that we're gonna be in the Capitol in six hours. But hey, you said it, not me."

Great. That's just perfect. I'd done an alright job of not imagining my rapidly impending death until right about now, when she so helpfully had to remind me of it. I'm not under any grand illusion that I'm getting out of this alive, even if Farren is. I don't have the heart to tell her that, either. I know on the outside it looks like I'm unruffled, but my insides recognize that I'm terrified. Maybe that's why it feels like my lungs are somewhere in my stomach.

"I don't know what I'm doing," I groan, rubbing my hands over my face. I really don't. I wish I did.

"And you think I do?" Emori asks. "This is my first year. Just because we're the same age doesn't mean I know how to fix your problems."

"Aren't seventeen year olds supposed to have the same problems?"

"I've got murdered six people kinda problems. I think yours are vastly different."

It's too easy, to forget that she killed six people a year ago. Half of the Career pack and the pair from Seven and the last a fourteen year old boy from Three who spent four hours bleeding out in one of her traps because she was nowhere near him to finish him off. And I didn't care about those people then, still don't really now, but it's too easy to imagine myself in her place next year.

And no matter if I need to get back to my brother and that stupid dog he loves so much and the too gray sky of Six, I don't want to imagine myself like that. I don't think I have the courage to live with myself after that.

Besides, I'm tired. And it's not just the lack of sleep.

Another door creaks open, right around the middle, and Farren pokes her head out into the hallway, blinking blearily between the two of us. I drop my head back onto the wall behind me. Whoops.

"What are you guys doing?" Farren murmurs quietly, scrubbing at one of her eyes. Emori looks at me, like she's waiting for an answer. The silence stretches down the hallway yet again, with Farren gaining more awareness by the second as she waits and listens.

"Well, I'm going back to bed," Emori announces. "See you in the morning."

I raise my hand in a half-hearted farewell as she disappears back into her room, making sure to shut the door tight behind her. Farren waits, probably assuming I'm going to get up any second now, but I don't. After a minute she closes her own door but comes out to sit across from me instead, throwing her legs over mine when I don't move.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not really," I mutter, and she's already awake now, so I don't care. She has every right to go back to sleep if she wants to.

"Want me to talk?" Farren asks instead, and when I roll my head around to look at her she smiles, gently.

"Go for it."

I know she can _talk_ , I've heard her and her friends chattering before, but it's nothing like that now. She tells me quietly about her siblings and her parents and her room back in Six and the entire time I think about my little brother and where he is now. There's no way they'll let him live on his own, not without a job and not without me there to watch him. Maybe he'll end up with another family. Maybe the streets.

All I know, eventually, is that Farren's voice drops to a barely audible murmur and somewhere along the way I close my eyes.

If I wake up five hours later with a blanket draped over me and her still sitting on the opposite wall, fast asleep herself, no one ever knows about it.

* * *

 **Anya Preising, 15 years, District Two Female.**

* * *

This is not at all the position I expected myself to be in.

Six months ago I would've said I'd be sitting here next to Rufus and that Ashlar Vikken would be mentoring me because, well, that's just how it was laid out. But it was also at that time that Seren came back and the trainers told Blair that he was no longer the chosen volunteer. Judging by the fact that he's here right now, I don't think he took it all that well.

Cicely's a hardass, sure, but she'll be a good mentor for me. It's not like she'd take Blair anyway; people who don't listen to her are her least favorite thing in the world, and this particular train car just happens to be half full of them.

I don't know how much longer she'll last though, is the issue.

It's even shorter than I had imagined. Eventually Cicely excuses herself to her own room, if just for a minute. She said she'd be back but I'm mostly inclined to believe that she's lying, and I want to be angry at her. I want her to get over her own issues with half of the room because I'm younger than every other Career I'm going to meet in the Capitol and that alone is worrying enough.

There's no clear path for me here.

I know that I could be my own demise here, if I'm not careful. And while I'm half-tempted to be angry at Cicely for abandoning me right now I know that if I say anything I'll only make it worse for myself in the long run. I know what happened to the last tribute that pissed her off - Seren might've won but I think it came too close for people in Two to admit.

Besides, do I really blame Cicely? For all intents and purposes it seems like Blair and Seren are getting along like a house on fire. Two of the people nearing the top of her shit list and now they've teamed up against her? No wonder she's pissed off.

It also kinda makes me feel like the odd man out, now that she's gone. I wasn't lying when I said I was the youngest person here by a mile.

"You don't have to sit over there, you know."

Of course Seren's offering, because she's not trying to make me seem like the outcast here. It doesn't stop me from feeling like it, though. Maybe it's just the anxiety talking but with Cicely having fled the scene and them being the only people able to pay any sort of attention to me right now, I don't want to push them away. Even though I should. Even though I know it's my best shot as having a mentor that actually cares about me.

"I'm good over here," I smile. Sitting at the table, far away enough that if Cicely were to come back it doesn't seem suspicious.

"Oh, come on," Blair insists. "What, since the 155th are Two guys just instantly marked as the boogeyman?"

Seren stares at him. "Really?"

"It's the truth!"

To be fair to Blair, it is the truth. Mostly. Not fair to him, necessarily, but if thinking of him like that keeps me in the right mindset, then I guess I'll just have to accept it.

"You sure?" Seren asks. Still genuine about it, too. "I'm sure Cicely's got some _great_ advice but I can guarantee the stuff I have to tell you is ten times better."

It probably is, but I shake my head. I can't continue being this irresponsible, fickle teenager that Two knows. That's not an option anymore. Right now I have to prove myself to all of the people that are no doubt going to be better than me. I don't need to joke around and have fun here. I need to figure out where to go.

"I'm gonna go look for Cicely, actually," I announce, standing up from the table. I may be small but I still know how to dig my heels in and square my shoulders. "She's my mentor. I think I should be asking her for advice, not you."

Neither of them really seem surprised at my sudden refusal. Then again, Blair's probably seen enough of me in the past six months that he's just come to expect this. Seren just crosses her arms over her chest, and smiles a little bit. Maybe I'm wrong, but she almost looks a little impressed. It makes me feel better about myself, knowing just how many people I've seen terrified of her these past few months.

"You're gonna regret it," she insists.

"I'll survive," I fire back. Blair shakes his head in amusement and leans back into the couch, looking far too relaxed.

Maybe everyone is but me.

I take my leave from the car, hurrying along as quickly as I can manage, but pause just outside before I can think to keep walking. The door slides shut, separating us, but I can still just manage to see them through the window. I'm never going to have anything like that with Cicely. No instantaneous bond, no reassurance or hugs that should come from someone like an old friend. No easy, effortless relationship that people seem to so long for in a moment like this.

But unlike so many people before me, I didn't come here for easy.

I came here because I know what I'm capable of.

One day they'll all see it too.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

I don't know how much longer I can take being on this train.

There's only so many things to look at, places to wander off to. My room, for all of it's luxuries, is about the size of a shoebox. It doesn't help that Camden walks around loudly enough to wake the dead, like he's trying to prove a damn point. Whatever point it is, it's annoying.

"You know my sister?"

I blink. Camden's lurking behind me like some sort of weird bigfoot, trying and failing to look at whatever book I have in my hands, one of the old dusty ones that no one ever bothers pulling off the shelf on the train. I thought, maybe, that there would be some resources here. Something to collect. But I don't even think it's in English.

"Evie, yeah? She's in my math class."

He makes a noise, helpful as ever, and continues squinting at the cover of the book. So it's either definitely not in English or he's just stupid. Or both. Judging by the fact that he volunteered and has since been a complete dick to both of our mentors when they asked why since then, I'm definitely going with stupid.

"Have you seen a pen and paper anywhere?"

"Why?"

"Just wanna make notes about the recap. And the others."

So allies, then. Clearly he's got some sort of grand master plan going on here, and when I point him in the right direction he scoops both things up instantly, like he's certain he knows what he wants to write down. I can't exactly see what he's writing down, but it looks a lot like names even from this distance. His own name is written at the top of the page like he needs to reassure himself that he's there.

God, why?

"Am I on that list?" I ask, and he turns around. Probably didn't even think I was paying attention.

"Why? Do you wanna be?"

Suddenly, I regret asking. He's got this annoying, way too satisfied look on his face, like he just hit the jackpot in making me say the words out-loud. I don't know what it is with him. He didn't say a word to me on stage or at the station or anywhere, really, until right now. Now that he's free from Seven he's cocky and too proud and I'm one hundred percent not a fan.

So why am I asking?

"I asked you a question."

I feel very inconsequential, suddenly, with him staring down at me. I square my shoulders and straighten up a bit more.

"What if I do wanna be?"

He grins and dangles the paper in front of my face, the edges tickling my nose. I scowl and rip it out of his hand, flattening it out again. Not a single person under sixteen, for starters. A few Careers, but mostly outliers.

"Why?"

"Why not?" Camden fires back. "Why do we let six Careers kill the majority of us off every year if they're not winning anyway? It's fucking pathetic, if you ask me. We could use one or two, yeah. For a while. But I'm sick and tired of no one ever giving a damn about us because there's a group six strong or close to it just waiting to entertain them."

For whatever reason, I get the impression that he's been feeling that way about a lot of things in life. But I wouldn't dare say that now, not when our mentors aren't around and there's no one to save me if he gets angry.

I get the feeling he's angry a lot, too.

The thing is, what he's saying make sense. No one's going to pay attention to a scrawny fifteen year old, especially if I go into that arena _alone_. I could. I could sit back and watch Camden build his supposed empire from afar, watch it crumble, if it does.

But I already know how I'll feel if I do that. I'll sit back and let him do it and I'll feel sick, eventually. I know I could do this on my own, theoretically. If I really had to. But I could also do it other ways, and I'll never know if I don't at least try.

"You know you can't do this alone," Camden says, voice very quiet, and I almost give the paper back to him. He's already underestimating people. Writing them down and trusting their names without the person behind it. But maybe, just this once, I have to go easy on him. Give him the benefit of the doubt. He's certainly thought this through more than I have, or he wouldn't be standing here right now.

Besides, this list doesn't look half bad.

I'm still holding onto it, clutched tightly in my left hand. I take a deep breath and hold out my other towards him. He grins and drops the pen into it.

Like I said. Collecting resources. That's what all these names are, his still written crookedly across the top.

We all have to take what we can get here. And I'm not about to shove something like this aside.

"You in?"

I write my name across the bottom of the page.

"Yeah. Let's do this."

* * *

The Careers being a thing? Not on my watch.

At least this time I'm just coming out and saying it instead of giving anyone false hope. Though I'm sure I'm doing that in some other respect, or at this point, without knowing it. Someone will call me out on it eventually, I'm sure.

Until next time.


	9. Game On

Train Rides, Part Two.

* * *

 **Early Sinnett, 14 years, District Three Female.  
**

* * *

I don't think this is going quite how our mentors expected it to.

Shirin and I aren't that different. I think it's how similar we are that's screwing everything up, really. The only issue is that no matter what I say he hardly reacts at all; his face is annoying blank and nothing I've said thus far has done anything to change that.

You'd think our similarities would be helping us out in a situation like this.

Wrong.

I watch him cut his chicken into little, methodical pieces that are too uniform to not be suspicious, his grip on the knife too confident. Not two seconds after I notice his eyes flicker up to mine. Sciel and Aukai are both hardly eating. Probably too busy watching the spectacle that is us staring each other down across the table. I know if I was a mentor I'd be massively concerned right about now.

"Can I help you with something?" Shirin asks, finally. I shrug and shove a spoonful of potatoes in my mouth before anything else can spill out. For all I know, the next time I say something, that knife he's holding is going to end up in my eye.

Right now, it wouldn't surprise me.

"Did either of you have any thoughts on allies?"

Shirin looks at me. He's still holding the knife. If he doesn't put it down soon I'm going to start getting concerned. Sciel, the one to ask the question, looks like she regrets opening her mouth in the first place.

"I don't think he wants to be allies with me," I point out. I'm almost prepared for Shirin to completely ignore me without saying anything. It's not like that would be any different than the past few hours of drawn out, uncomfortable silence. I didn't think he was this weird.

He doesn't, though. He's just full of surprises, it seems.

"Why would I want to be allies with someone who's going to be dead two seconds in?" Shirin asks calmly. That's gotta be payback for me endlessly annoying him. Who knows, or cares for the matter, if he actually believes it. It's not like my opinion has really mattered thus far.

"That's not very nice," I frown, which only serves in me earning his first real sign of emotion yet. The edge of his mouth quirks, just enough. Probably out of anger, or annoyance. Most likely both, if he's capable than feeling more than one emotion at a time.

I throw a pea at him to see if I can make it worse.

Aukai and Sciel don't even notice me roll it off my plate, so it's all too easy to pick it up between my thumb and index finger and fling it across the table. It bounces, quite hilariously, off his cheek and lands dead center in the middle of his almost empty plate, rolling to the edge before it comes to a stop.

He doesn't even say anything. He just shoves his chair back, stands up, and is gone through the door to the next train car before I can even pick another one up to push my luck.

"You can't antagonize him forever, you know," Aukai insists.

"Who says?"

"The more you push it the worse he'll become. You're less than twelve hours into this. Do you want to make an enemy this fast?"

"Honestly," I admit. "I could not give less of a shit."

That, of all things, is the truth. Shirin can say anything he wants, it'll never make me care. If he wants to be my enemy then he'll have to be fast enough to catch me in the first place. There's no doubt he'll look more valuable than I do to any alliance. A little bit older, stronger, calmer. Less likely to throw things at them.

"I'm gonna go see if I can talk to him." Sciel excuses herself from the table. I wish she would realize that there's little to no point. Trying to talk reason shouldn't even be a thing when they're in the process of shipping us off to the Capitol to die.

Hopefully, at least, it's Shirin before me.

"I just want you to hear me out," Aukai explains. "It's not gonna just be him, if you keep up with it. No doubt you'll find some people you like, who like you, however it works out. But that's not the issue. From here on out everyone's going to be watching you."

"Yeah, I know, and if I make a bad impression all my sponsors go down the drain, and so does my support, yada yada, I get it. You don't have to spell it out for me."

With the field this year, I probably don't have that great of a shot at sponsors anyway. I'm pretty sure even the youngest of them are more intimidating than me. If there's no point to me acting all prim and proper for the next few days, then I'm not going to. Why should I, anyway? I didn't want this to happen, and caring's not going to help. If that means no allies, no sponsors, then so be it. I wasn't concerned about those when I got reaped and I'm still not concerned about it now.

"I'll try," I tell Aukai. He nods, and too much like Shirin, I can't tell if he really believes me or not.

I'm not telling the truth, of course. But if telling him that will get him off my back about it, then I'm more than willing to play along.

I lean back in my chair and throw another pea at Shirin's now empty seat. It bounces harmlessly off the back of it and sinks into the carpet, where I'll no doubt tread on it later.

Let Shirin say what he wants. Let the Capitol do it, the other mentors, the sponsors.

At the end of the day their words won't kill me any faster than the current rate.

* * *

 **Tavian Muric, 16 years, District One Male.**

* * *

I can't help but feel even the slightest bit bad for everyone else.

Certainly not Dimara, though, who has two more years training than I do. Not the Careers, either. We're all volunteers this year. Apparently we've finally got our shit together in the respect of getting volunteers every year when we just keep dying. Though that's probably why I'm here in the first place.

I know all too well there's someone a year older than me that could've volunteered this year. That probably should have, if I'm being honest. It's not like I'm bad or anything but I know he's almost as close to perfect as you can get in training. And that's what it all boiled down to, in the end. If they were willing to put someone else maybe not quite as perfect in this year to ensure that he _would_ be perfect, come next year.

Clearly, if anything, they're expecting Dimara to win this one, not me. I'm the battle fodder.

That's what they're expecting, anyway.

What actually happens could be, and most likely will be, something completely different.

"What do you think our chances are?" I ask Dimara, eventually. She's sitting on the armrest of the couch next to me, staring as the Seven guy volunteers and looking particularly unimpressed about it.

" _Our_ chances?" Dimara replies after a moment. Her eyes never leave the television - it's awkward to just be staring at the side of her face wondering what the hell she actually means.

It doesn't take long, though. She looks at me, finally, and grins. "Relax. I was kidding. But do you want my honest answer?"

I don't think I want it, really, but I nod anyway.

"I don't think there's a chance in hell of us being six strong this year. Not that I would want us to be. My preferred death, if I had to pick one, is not exactly surprise shanked by one of my own allies who got a little too bored."

Maybe it was foolish to believe it could be a reality, then. But that's what I've been raised on since I started training. That I'd be a part of the Pack no matter who else it entailed. The issue is, she's right. It doesn't work like that anymore. Maybe all of that is a thing of the past. The most worrying part of that is I'm feeling a concern I don't usually feel no matter what I'm faced with.

If there's no alliance, then where the hell do we start? Where the hell do _I_ start?

Dimara's obviously been thinking about this for a while. She probably already knows who she's leaning towards. But it's like I said, I almost feel bad for everyone else. The younger kids and the terror in their eyes when they heard their names and realize they didn't have a choice in the matter. Some of the older ones, who were rooted to the ground, frozen in fear.

"Just do whatever you want, kid," Dimara says, jumping to her feet.

"I'm two years younger than you. Not even."

She shrugs and reaches out to ruffle my hair, an amused look on her face when I duck away and end up half-sprawled across the couch for my efforts.

"What if something like that does happen, though?" I ask her.

"Like what?"

"A Career alliance, or whatever. Or not even the Careers. If there's another big group."

"Like I said, do whatever you want. You won't catch my ass anywhere near them. But if that's what you want, I'm obviously not going to stop you. All I'll say is have fun."

I met this girl when I was twelve and she was fourteen, both of us already hitting targets with a throwing spear, and somehow never imagined the two of us in this situation together. We're not even friends, not really. She has her own and so do I. That still doesn't mean I want us to end up on opposite sites, especially if she's outnumbered and outgunned. There aren't many things that could make me upset in here, not really, but watching her die when she never had a chance to begin with might be one of them.

Maybe that's where I need to still learn. If she's willing to let me go then clearly she doesn't care about where I end up or what happens to me because of it.

"Take notes," she says. "You might want to know who you're getting into an alliance with before you do it."

There's too many notes to take, is the issue. The Four girl started a fist fight on stage just to say she won. There was nearly one in Two between the guys. And there's still more to consider, further out. The ones who took the stage in stony-faced silence, or the ones who smiled when there was no room for it because they only know how to play along.

"Game on," I fire back, and Dimara turns around. She quirks an eyebrow at me.

"You really wanna go that route?" Dimara replies, but she's grinning. "Ballsy."

I'm serious. I don't think I've ever been more serious in my life. She can do what she wants and I'm the same, but there's only one way this ends.

I don't plan on being the battle fodder they made me.

Dimara never stops smiling, and I can't help the laugh that bubbles out of my mouth the longer she looks. If I didn't imagine us together in this, then I definitely didn't dare to think we'd be against each other. And maybe we're not, not really.

But I plan on making my own path.

And if she's not on it, then I'll have to live with that

* * *

 **Isi Akiloff, 17 years, District Five Female.**

* * *

God, this could not possibly get any worse.

I thought it had started and ended when the escort called my name and the daughter of one of Five's councilor's snickered very quietly behind me, in the 18's, like I couldn't hear her clear as day. I always knew she didn't like me, never has since we met at one of those fancy family-only meetings at the mayor's house, but that was something else.

Karma better come for her for that, and it better be clear as day as well.

Nothing's improved since then. Parker's weird, which I think is a nice way to put it, and seems content to quiz the escort on things he absolutely doesn't have a single clue about. At least the kid's smart, if not annoying. He knows more about musical history than I do and I've been forced into playing piano since I was eight because Dad wanted me to have a proper, reliable hobby that only we could afford.

That may not help me here but I got something else from him too. That cunning, insatiable urge to prove to everyone else that they're ultimately, at the end of the day, completely worthless unless they make something of themselves.

Tessa seems at a bit of a standpoint with herself, completely at a loss for how to communicate with me and how to navigate the situation. That's because the two other kids she's mentored since she's won were both younger than fifteen and lasted a total of around twenty-five minutes, combined, in the arena. At least that's a fact I remember. Neither of those were very pretty.

I know, for starters, that I don't have much going for me. I'm not physically imposing like my father is, like my brother probably will be one day. I got my mother's lean, willowy frame. The one that causes people to give you one look and write you off as useless, if you're in any position but mine. I'm only not written off as useless because people have lost fingers for calling people in my family less than that.

"Would you stop?" I ask Parker finally. He makes sure to finish his question first but spares a glance at me afterwards. The escort sends me a grateful glance, his mistake, and very carefully shoves his chair back.

Trying to make his escape. Not as discreetly as he should be.

"Why should I?"

"It's pissing me off," I inform him. "This isn't some stupid budget friendly Capitol game show. Stop with the questions."

"It's not like I'd know about those," he replies. "I don't exactly have the good fortune of watching them, do I?"

Ah, the poor kid card. As if I give a shit about that. It's not like I asked to be born in the situation I'm currently in. I had the _good fortune_ to be in the place I am, because of my father's own ruthlessness and my mother's quiet manipulation. I don't think Vidal's adopted any of their traits, not really, but that just leaves more room for me. To take over when they're gone.

"Everyone in this room is richer than you, boohoo," I deadpan. "Get over it. Not gonna make any friends with that attitude."

"Neither are you."

"That implies that I want friends," I scoff. "I need _allies_. Ones that are capable and stupid enough to do what I ask of them. Not anything more."

"Well, that's certainly a good start," Tessa mutters under her breath. If she had a better strategy for me in mind, then she certainly didn't voice it before now. There can't possibly be another way. I don't look like enough of a threat for someone to want me because of my physical capabilities. I realized that the second they called my name. I've heard a minimum of three announcers point out how murderous I looked when I started towards the stage. How many people think that was just a happy accident?

I'm not some blithering, crying idiot. I know what I need to do.

Better yet, I have most of the financial support to do it. And that's before the Capitol learns who I _really_ am - how quickly will they leap to their feet to support me once they realize my family works for the government?

They'll be tripping over themselves. I know I would be too.

"Anything else you'd care to share with us about your strategy?" Lumin asks, finally. The escort is still very slowly attempting to stand up without drawing any attention to himself, but he freezes the second I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. I can't tell what Parker's thinking, anymore.

Inspiring fear in the hearts of others with a look alone. Dad would be so proud.

I can't help but shrug, though. I may not have a plan but I was made for this, in a way. I know how to navigate the inner workings of difficult situations, how to deal with impossible people because there's no other choice in the dog eat dog world that I was raised in.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out," I reply. I'm not going to detail every little ounce of my journey to him, or anyone else for that matter. Parker's as good as dead already; they have to know that if they don't back me now, they're not getting a victor this year at all. It's up to them.

Parker may not play their game, may not have any interest in it.

But I will.

* * *

 **Jaeden Hillion, 15 years, District Twelve Male.**

* * *

"You're going to be underestimated."

I don't need Ashara vocalizing it for me to believe it. That's been my whole life, the past few years. Scrawny, scraggly orphan kid running around the Seam - no one ever thinks anything about that. Hell, if the adults can keep track of how many of them there are at any given time that's a miracle in itself.

But I thought I had left all that behind. I still remember when it happened. Eight months and twelve days ago, when the Vanserra family moved their noble selves to the poorest part of the District in an effort to better the area. Better _themselves_ , they had said, because they couldn't bear to live such a life of luxury when they saw how people were starving, were dying every day because no one was doing anything about it.

I remember thinking, too, how much all of it sounded like bullshit. No one goes out of their way like that, willingly makes their life worse, to better the lives of others. Maybe in other places, but certainly not in Twelve.

Two days later little nine year old Libby and even scrawnier, seven year old Nia were practically living with them, full bellies every night when they retired to actual beds, and I had wondered if it was all real.

It had to be, though. I would see kids running around, happy teenagers. and think that it could be me, if I would just allow myself to have it. They had kids my age too. But all I could think about was how the clothes on my back were stolen off a washing line from a rich house near the Square and how I fell asleep most nights after eating food I stole from the merchants. I didn't know how to be a better person. Didn't know how to show myself to them and ask for help.

I never let myself set foot inside their front door, either. I wanted to. I wanted so badly to be a better person, to stop taking things behind people's backs because they made the mistake of trusting my face and the bones poking out of my skin a little too much.

Maybe it's a good thing I never did, if I was just always going to end up here.

I know I can do this. It's a matter of wanting to. I don't have an issue lying, cheating, stealing. It's all I've done to survive the past few years, secondhand nature. But looking at the Vanserra's I told myself to be better. To trust, even for just a moment, that things could get better even if I was a nicer person. I didn't have to steal to survive, to lie. I could go to them and let myself in and maybe, just maybe, it could work.

"Nadir's a lost cause, isn't she?" I ask. I wouldn't know. She hasn't talked to me. Been in her room most of the time like I want to be. If I wouldn't let myself enjoy the luxury of real life before now then maybe I should take the opportunity.

"I'll talk to her, but I don't know if you guys would work out anyway."

"I don't think I need allies," I inform her. "I don't .. I don't know how to work with other people, really. I'm probably better off alone."

The only thing the Vanserra's have done for me, really, is get me a job. Just working in the back of the house for one of the shopkeeper's. Out of sight of the customers, almost out of his mind entirely. I do my job and I get a bit of money for it and that keeps me going, enough that I only have to start thieving few nights when things get bad. Not as much as I used to, when it was practically all my hands knew how to do.

They've offered, so many times, to get me more involved. And I never wanted to. Just keep my head down and get the job done.

"You know yourself better than I ever will," Ashara says. "If that's what you want, then stick with it. It'll be harder, obviously. Don't rule out the idea yet - there's still twenty-two other kids out there. Who knows. Maybe you don't want them but one of them could want you."

I nod, but it's almost mechanical at this point. Allies mean someone I'll have to stab in the back later on and operation act like a relatively decent human being gets cut off real fast if I go down that track. Maybe I should just accept right now that the operation is over entirely. No use acting like I can manage something that literally no one ever manages in the Games.

"You have a chance, kid," she continues. "A real chance. And maybe I say that more often than I should, but this time around I'm not joking. You've survived long enough on your own. You know how to adjust to life to keep living it. Just keep adjusting."

I can picture it all too easily. Adjusting could mean anything. Allies that end up dead at my hands, later on, because all I know how to do is push other people out of the way to keep myself alive. Adjusting could mean hiding for days instead of acting, and I can't imagine myself pushed into a corner hopeful that someone just won't find me. They always find you.

In the long run, though, adjusting could just mean that I need to accept who I am. Life put me in this situation for a reason, made me raise myself for some sort of greater purpose.

Maybe this was always supposed to be it.

* * *

Why are pre-games chapters simultaneously the best thing ever and also the worst?

Gonna start updating the blog now with allies and whatnot if people have difficulty keeping track of that, because we're getting to the Capitol and I'll be doing it non-stop then anyway. Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas/Happy Holiday and I shall see you all in the new year.

Until next time.


	10. Look Forward

Chariots, Part One.

* * *

 **Houston Harrels, 12 years, District Ten Male.**

* * *

I think, without words, that me and Kelsea have become allies.

Neither of us ever said it out-loud. Even when our mentors discussed allies with us we never talked about it. But we haven't really left each other's side long enough to discuss it with other people, have we? Besides. As soon as they were done getting me ready I went right to Kelsea's room without even thinking, and she had smiled when she saw me in the doorway, and that seems good enough. I don't think we need words to figure it out.

It's not like there's anything for me to do besides this, anyway. We're all still in the mindset that Kelsea and I should be doing everything together, a united front as always. There's no reason for me to go out there without her.

"Are you sure I look okay?" Kelsea asks, for what must be the seventh time since I arrived. Lord only knows how many times she asked _before_ I got here. The stylist tuts and tilts her chin back.

"You look amazing, sweetheart! As if there was any doubt."

It's nothing crazy. She's wearing a long, royal blue dress that's supposed to look like a blue ribbon. Not ... exactly, I would say, but close enough. I look like an equestrian rider from somewhere much richer than Ten, my jacket the same color as her dress. Definitely more creative than they've gotten in recent years, at least. I don't know if I'll be able to get out of this afterwards, for how tight it is, but I'll worry about that later.

There's the sound of more footsteps down the hallway and I peer out of the doorway.

"Who's that?" Kelsea asks. She tries to look herself but one of the assistants all but grabs her by the shoulders and pins her to the chair. So much for that.

"Twelves, I think," I say quietly. I think I've got all of the other tributes down. The girl goes sailing past me before I even get a good look at her face to make sure it's really her, the boy not far behind her. He's got his hands shoved deep into his black, dusty pockets and spares us a split-second glance before he's continuing on after her.

After that it's the Fours. The girl does almost exactly the same thing as the first one did, with even more scowling, but the boy stops, after a second. Hesitates when he looks at us.

"Don't mind Celia. She's being a little pissy today."

"I'm being _what_?" And he seems to panic, eyes going wide, when he realizes she's stopped at the hallway and is what? Waiting for him? Or getting ready to hit him, it looks more like. I barely hear Kelsea stifle a giggle behind me as he goes tearing after her. And I don't see it, once they turn the corner, but it's all too easy to imagine the smack he probably earned for that one.

"Probably shouldn't be laughing at the Careers," I point out and she covers her mouth, looking no less amused. It's good to see her like this though. Happy. Sometimes it's too easy to associate her with the girl who completely froze at the reapings and almost refused to move. We're both so much more than that moment, as we've come to learn.

"Alright, sweetheart, you're all done!"

Kelsea hops off of the chair with way too much eagerness and nearly falls over for her effort. I don't think the heels are helping matters much. I offer my arm to her and she smiles gratefully, toddling over until she can hook her arm through mine.

Kellen told us we didn't have to wait, so we don't. We don't need someone to escort us in, help us into our chariot. I doubt any of the older ones are going to be getting the same treatment, especially the _Careers_ of all people. We already made a decent impression at the reaping. Not stellar by any means but it was a start, and so we need to keep that up.

I've seen too many kids my age fail over and over again, but this year it could be possible. And I won't push Kelsea out of the way to do it.

Two Peacekeepers open the grand doors for us, and Kelsea sucks in a breath. The room is huge, the chariots all lined up in the middle of the stadium. There's not too many people out yet, and I have no idea where the Fours managed to get to if it wasn't here, but that's it. Not _too_ intimidating, in the very least.

I'm sure it will be, very soon though. Kelsea and I cross the room and even the meager number of people in the room are staring at us, at her holding onto my arm, no doubt. At least once the rest of the tributes join us we'll have the advantage.

Maybe.

I help her up into the chariot and then clamber up after her, hoping no one notices the scuff marks on my knees. This is better. We can see everything now, and the height doesn't seem so daring.

"We got this," Kelsea says confidently. She's still holding onto the edge of the chariot, and I mostly suspect that's because she's wary of falling right out of the chariot with the shoes on, but she smiles.

Like I said, it's _enough_.

"Of course we do," I fire back. I'm never this confident, and maybe I'm not. Not really. At the end of the day we're still two, small kids daring to fight back against the odds. And maybe the audience will end up forgetting us.

But I know I won't.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

I'm really questioning whether or not this could get worse.

It started with Camden being done a rough hour and a half before me. _An hour and a half_. That's mostly because he just ... looks like himself. Like every stupid, stereotypical District Seven lumberjack, plaid shirt and all.

It's more concerning than that, though. The prep team hasn't been too keen on telling me exactly what I'm even supposed to be. All I had for the longest time is that I also had a bit of plaid on, and my legs were inching closer and closer together by the second because of whatever they were doing to them. By the time they allow me to stand up and look at myself in the mirror, I can hardly manage to walk at all.

At least now I know why.

They've turned everything from my waist down into a shoddy representation of a tree trunk. I think. It better be that, or else I have absolutely zero idea what it is.

It all hits me at once. Camden's a damn lumberjack, and if I remember correctly, they gave him an axe and everything.

So, what? Camden's the lumberjack that's going to cut me down?

Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I leave the room before they can change their minds and draw me back in, but it's slow going. I don't think they accounted for the restriction this skirt, or whatever it is, was going to have on my legs. I can shuffle forward an inch or two at a time and that's it. It'll be a miracle if I don't careen over halfway there, having to inchworm myself the rest of the way to the chariot.

Camden's probably going to kill himself laughing later, is the worst part. He won't do it in front of other people because this alliance needs to be a serious thing, something worthwhile. According to him, anyway. That doesn't work if he spends half of his time laughing at me.

"Do you need help?"

" _Yes_ ," I respond, before I can even think of who the voice belongs to. It's not like I can turn around to check.

The One guy loops his arm around my waist and nearly terrifies me, but it becomes evident very quickly that he's genuinely trying to help. Tavian, I think. He was one of the one's on Camden's list. The youngest one, if I remember correctly, besides myself.

"Day not going so great?" Tavian asks. I'm basically hopping to gain ground at this point, but at least he's propelling me forward now. A foot, maybe, instead of inches. Progress.

"That easy to tell?" I grumble, and he laughs. God, he has no idea. Whatever he's dressed in is white and gold and flowy and he can _move_. He has literally no idea how bad it could be. He's also probably not beginning to regret allying with his District partner more and more by the second. If he even is. Camden probably wouldn't be interested in him if he thought he wanted to go the traditional route.

The second the doors open my day hits peak disaster level.

" _Please_ do not take me over there," I beg, looking towards the Seven chariot. Camden's already over there, but now he's got the Five girl with him. She's leaning up against the side of our chariot, somehow managing to make a skirt made out of wire coils and fake electricity not look half bad. Typical. I knew Camden wanted her but not this fast, and I wasn't anywhere near prepared to deal with the level of bad I'm fairly sure she is.

"You can't just stay over here forever. It's going to start soon."

"Watch me," I fire back, but he doesn't let go. Doesn't really do anything.

"Okay, fine," I concede. "You go to yours and I'll go to mine."

He still doesn't move. How else can I say _save yourself_ without actually saying it? Camden might be interested in him but I'm beginning to think Tavian is far too nice for it. Maybe if he was mentally prepared to deal with the terror that is the rest of my alliance, but I don't think he is.

Finally, he shrugs. "I need an alliance anyway. And you two are allies, right? You three?"

I stare at him incredulously. How boys are still managing this level of stupidity is beyond me.

There's also a foolish, hopeful part of me that probably needs him though. Camden and Isi are going to be tight, probably, and who knows who else we'll end up with by the time training's over. Tavian went to _me_ first, offered help when he didn't have to. Besides, he's a Career. He volunteered, just like Camden did. Is easily on the same level as him despite being younger and that's reassuring enough on it's own even if I only met him five minutes ago.

I don't want to regret every single part of this alliance. And I already know leaving it will kill me anyway.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," I tell him, and he smiles. Not in triumph, but general optimism. I could use some of that right about now, instead of wondering and worrying about every single decision I made since I stepped on that train. That'll get me killed almost faster than Camden will.

Besides, maybe if I bring Tavian over, Camden will consider not laughing at me for two seconds.

It's a long shot, I know.

Maybe some of Tavian's optimism will rub off on me too.

* * *

 **Laurel Oversnow, 16 years, District Nine Female.**

* * *

"Stop worrying. You'll do amazing!"

Are stylists supposed to be extra encouraging by default or is Rosie just being extra nice? I'm not quite sure. I'd been doing better. Since the reaping and the goodbyes I haven't had anything remotely close to a mental breakdown. In fact I'd like to think I'd been rational and collected through it all.

I think it's helped, having Rooke around. Someone at least _mildly_ familiar. I don't think he's really wondering about the repercussions that could arise from him allying with the girl who by far had the worst meltdown at the reapings this year. Maybe it was mean, to watch the recaps and hope that one of the ones younger than me had lost it even more, but nothing. Hardly even a tear.

The issue is, I'm also not about to tell Rooke to go away because I know alone I'd be ten times worse than I currently am.

Maybe that makes me selfish. But I'm more scared of being on my own than I am about being selfish.

"Listen to me," Rosie says, dropping both of her hands on my shoulders. "You may be scared, but Rooke isn't. Right now there's no reason to be. All you have to do is go out there and be the girl you were with me when we were getting you ready. They're not expecting anything else."

She's not even as tall as me. Not intimidating in the slightest. I'm grateful for her - where the prep team wasn't very kind and gentle she was, and she recognized nerves better than anyone and dealt with me accordingly. After a while it got easier. So much easier, in fact, that I began talking to her like she was a friend back home before I even realized it. Like she was Kaia, or another girl from my class.

Rosie is nothing like them, obviously. Her eyes are artificially golden and her skin seems to shimmer when she moves but right then I wasn't paying attention to any of those things. It was enough to banish every thought of nerves from my head.

Rooke chances another glance at me from across the room. He's standing alone in our chariot. I probably don't have that long to get over there. Rosie squeezes my shoulders, tight but reassuring.

"The audience will see you smiling, see you being yourself, and all of their opinions will change. You still have time."

Four days of time, in fact, after today. Training and then the interviews and that's it. It doesn't seem like I have a lot of time, but Rosie makes it seem like so much more. Besides, I know how much can change in four days. I need to start using my head.

"Okay," I take a deep breath. "I'm gonna go."

"That's it!" Rosie says, tapping my chin. "Smile on. Go ahead."

I can feel her eyes on me as I make my way across the room, and that helps. There's no one paying too much attention to me besides that. A few darting glances here and there, but the room seems to be filling up more and more by the second and people have other things to pay attention to. The wheat skirt they have me in is swishing around my legs, bright and golden and it makes me feel a bit more like the kind of girl the Capitol will appreciate.

Rooke offers his hand down to me as I approach the chariot and I grab it gratefully, hauling myself up beside him.

"This stuff poking you in places it shouldn't be too?" Rooke asks, and I laugh. He shakes his head and a few pieces of fake wheat float gently down to the bottom of the chariot.

"You both look like you rolled in a pile of hay," an unfamiliar voice says, and I nearly jump. There's a boy standing on the other side of one of our horses, peering around the edge of one of them. If we look like hay bales he looks an awful lot like a telephone pole.

"That's Parker," Rooke explains. "He's trying to hide from his District partner."

"Won't be very successful if you say it that loud," he complains. Ah , right. District Five. Rooke and I both agreed we'd most likely be staying away from the girl, and that's who Parker's hiding from right now. Looks like we made the right decision.

"Is she really that bad? You could come up here with us, for now. She probably wouldn't say anything then."

Parker looks like I just offered to bite his head off, and he scoffs. "The only thing she finds more fun than terrorizing some random, unsuspecting kid is terrorizing an _entire_ group of them. She's got the Seven dude with her now, too. He doesn't look too friendly either."

I finally catch sight of them, a few rows up. They look more like Careers than some of the Careers do. I guess I can understand why Parker is avoiding them - they've got who has to be the other Seven with them too, and the One guy. Definitely a weird group. It would look even weirder if Parker was up there, no doubt, but I also don't think he wants to be.

"You sure?" I ask after a moment. There's only so much they can do now. Sure, in the Games they'll probably be terrifying. But would could they do to us right now?

"Want me to fight them?" Rooke questions, when Parker doesn't answer and I can't help but snort. Down on the ground Parker rolls his eyes. I don't think Rooke's actually serious, but I wouldn't put it past him. I'm pretty sure thinking things through isn't at the top of his priority list - he's more a do things now, regret it once you get slammed into the ground later kind of person.

Which is exactly what I'm convinced would happen if he went over there.

But he laughs, probably at the thought, and when I smile it doesn't feel totally forced.

At least Rosie will be happy about that.

* * *

POV layout is exactly the same as it was for Mayday, so if anyone's confused at the sudden shift to three instead of four, there's your explanation.

Hope everyone is having a great 2018 so far and that it's not nearly as atrocious as last year.

Until next time.


	11. Six Feet Under

Chariots, Part Two.

* * *

 **Parker Walden, 13 years, District Five Male.**

* * *

There's only so long I can spend hiding behind the Nine's chariot.

Rooke and Laurel have been nice, probably nicer than they should've been, but eventually a Peacekeeper is just going to come over and toss me in my own chariot like I'm an oddly shaped basketball, and that's the last thing I need right now. Lying helplessly at Isi's feet while she stands there all high and mighty is not my ideal Wednesday afternoon.

I still have to go over there, though. To avoid her or to not avoid her.

"See you later!" Laurel calls after me as I dart forward, attempting to hide behind the Eights. I grimace at the volume of her voice. The Eight girl turns around and gives me a look, quickly nudging her partner.

Rooke and Laurel are getting along great, and these two seem fine. Why did I get stuck with the awful one?

"Don't mind me," I mutter. It's just getting around the Sevens that's the issue. Why did I not go hide behind the Threes, or something? It would've been a lot easier to get back that way, and right now I'd rather spend time with the Careers than over here.

I almost make it. Almost isn't good enough.

I'm almost around the far edge of their chariot, and even though the One guy notices instantly and stares at me the entire time, he doesn't say anything. I edge around one of the horses and someone's hand locks around the collar of my shirt, dragging me backwards. Not forceful enough to be the Seven guy then, and judging by the spindly, tapered fingers brushing against the back of my neck it's gotta be Isi.

I almost wish it was the Seven guy.

"What's up partner?" Isi asks, almost directly into my ear, and I scowl. Why me.

"Ceremony's starting soon," I inform her. I don't know if that's the truth. I hope it is. Maybe she'll see sense and realize we have to go back to our own chariot instead of forcing me to stand here with everyone else.

"Don't worry, I'm watching the time. Thought you might want to say hello."

I most definitely do _not_ want to say hello. The only mercy of the whole thing is that the One guy doesn't really seem inclined to start anything and the Seven girl isn't looking at me at all, probably not to make it worse. That leaves only the Seven guy, who holds out his hand to me like that's a completely normal thing to do. What is his name even? Carter? Colin?

"Do you know how many Seven guys have died since the Hunger Games became a thing?" I ask him, instead of taking his hand. He blinks at me.

"What?"

"Didn't think so. A hundred and fifty-two. Seven male victors total, six females. Are you going to make it a hundred and fifty-three this year?"

I don't know who looks more incredulous; Isi, who looks close to hitting me right through the floor, or the two still sitting on the edge of the chariot behind me. I reckon they almost look like they want to laugh, though. To his credit it doesn't take Camden as long to get it as I thought it would. I watch the anger form on his face first-hand, and it's not a pretty thing.

"Bye," I chirp. The Seven girl swings her legs out of the way, confined as they are, as I go darting past her. No one else grabs me, so it would appear that I'm safe. That or Camden has not in fact completely wrapped his brain around what I said.

In the long run, that probably wasn't smart at all. If they've already got four of them at the chariots then more are sure to follow, and the last thing I need is an alliance that big devoting all their attention to little old me. Regardless, it doesn't worry me. You don't just need brute force to kill someone, you need brains too, and I think they maybe have two and a half between the four of them.

By the time I pull myself into our chariot, accidentally knocking one of the wire coils off of my shoulder, Isi is storming up. I square my shoulders and stare straight ahead, even as she climbs up next to me, staring at the wire coil on the ground as she does so.

I can feel the fury radiating off of her.

"You're a fucking idiot," she says flatly.

"Says you," I mutter under my breath. I can feel her glaring at me, but it's the truth. How stupid do you have to be, to get yourself into a mess like that?

"You won't be saying that when he winds up killing you. I'm not going to stop him."

"He's got to have more than rocks in his brain to accomplish that. He's also going to have to catch me first."

If Isi ever looks something other than unimpressed and pissed off when she talks to me, I'll probably fall over. She still looks it even as the doors open, even as the cheering crowd finally comes into view. Though I guess that's her angle, and I know mine.

No matter how many people would call me foolish for it, I know it wasn't. If I spend my entire time here cowering from them and running away from them nothing good will come of it. Eventually someone else will step up too. The Nines have seen me stand up to them now, the Eights too. Even if I started off the day hiding, I can't do that forever.

I wouldn't want to, either.

* * *

 **Anya Preising, 15 years, District Two Female.**

* * *

I'm supposed to be watching out for Blair.

I can understand why Seren wants me to, in the very least. I wouldn't put it past Blair to start a fist-fight with a wall because he was bored. Apparently not getting Blair to help me down out of the chariot, though, was a mistake. By the time I hit the ground he's already been standing there for a solid thirty seconds, and that's apparently enough for Camden to make his move.

That's why I made sure to remember everyone - how they acted, what they looked like. That's what Cicely said to do, everything down to the smallest detail. Makes it easier to tear them down that way, later on.

When I make it to Blair's side Camden doesn't even spare me a glance. The longer I stand there the more I expect him to say something to me, to even look down at me for a second. Nothing.

I cough under my breath and that's it, apparently. Blair looks no short of amused, no surprise there, as Camden's eyes flicker to mine.

"Can I help you?" Camden asks.

"I was just wondering what you guys were talking about."

"Nothing that concerns you."

I stare at him. If it was anyone else, I would've thought I'd misheard them.

"Oh, wrong move dude," Blair says, laughing. "Dear old Seven here was just wondering if I wanted to join his mini army. Though apparently that offer doesn't extend to _you_."

I'm not under the impression that me and Blair are tight, that we're anything like allies. But it appears he's standing with me on this issue, which is mildly touching. Besides Tavian, I think we all are. Dimara and Celia are still sitting on the edge of One's chariot, watching. Rodrik is trying and failing to be discreet about staring at us. Not one of them looks eager to step up and be the one to join.

"Just waiting on an answer," Camden says. I have a feeling he's said it already, before I got down here.

"Why the _fuck_ would I want to join your alliance?" Blair asks flatly. "That's a disaster waiting to happen, unfortunately for Tavian. Have fun brainwashing him though."

I should've just went the opposite way, towards the others. Let Blair and Camden go at it themselves without me getting involved and putting an even bigger target on my back. Now that the two of them have opened their mouth though, I can't. I need to distinguish myself as someone here, and running in the opposite direction away from any signs of conflict isn't going to do that.

"Why do you even want the Careers, anyway?" I ask him. "To use as battle fodder down the line? I'm sure Tavian would appreciate knowing that."

"Tavian joined of his own free will. Came to us because he knows you lot are getting more and more disastrous by the year. You're _fifteen years old_. And from District Two, of all places?" He looks to Blair, now, eyebrows raised. "And what about you? You weren't the chosen volunteer. Are they just running out of kids to kill?"

It's everything I've been thinking in someone else's voice. I've wondered this whole time if that's what everyone would think, that they would push me aside and write me off just because of my age. Tavian's already gone, Blair doesn't seem to care even if his face twists at Camden's words, Dimara and Celia have already been by each other's side since the beginning, and I have absolutely zero clue what Rodrik's thinking, right about now.

Is this the fate I'm left to? Being outcasted because of things completely out of my control right from the get go?

I can't let that happen.

"Someone's gonna put you six feet under sooner rather than later," I inform him. "I hope you're ready for it."

"Oh, well please, if it's going to be you let me know," Camden says. "I'll be ready for you."

If I could smack him right now without any repercussions, I would. To be fair I think Blair got to that point several minutes ago. Definitely got to it, with Camden pointing out that he isn't supposed to be here. I can't afford to be that rash right now but the option is looking more and more tempting by the second.

"I hope you realize the mistake the two of you are making right now," he continues. "I'm sure you will. Have fun on your own. I'm sure we'll have fun coming after you."

"I thought the offer didn't extend to me," I snap, and I _feel_ myself snap, all through my body. Camden doesn't respond, just waves in farewell as he turns to go. Back to his alliance, or his next target. I wonder how many people will be on what side, by the end of today. The division's are going to be awful by the time we're in the Games, no doubt.

"Okay, I _know_ I can be an asshole," Blair starts. "But even I'm not that bad."

I don't think anyone else here is, not even remotely close. That's the only comfort here. Even if Camden's alliance does get bigger there's no doubt he's going to piss more people off down the line. I think, eventually, even his own alliance will begin to see that. They're not stupid kids. Eventually they'll realize that the longer they stick around the more they risk themselves.

No one wants to be dragged down because of someone else's ego.

I know I wouldn't.

What I do know, without a doubt, is that Camden is going to have a hard time getting his way out of this one. My age doesn't matter, my experience. He's only going to fall harder for it, the higher he gets. That's one thing I've been taught since the beginning. You don't have to be eighteen to know it.

"Promise me something," I say. "Allies or not, make sure he dies."

Blair stares after him, all traces of amusement gone. "I can handle that."

* * *

 **Casper Tolson, 17 years, District Six Male.**

* * *

"Stay over here."

"Why?" Farren asks. "What's going on?"

The last thing I need right now is Farren deciding she needs to try and place nice and separate the Seven and Two guys, of all people. It's kind of a blessing right now that we're surrounded by so many people that I can hardly see, because that means she definitely can't.

"Nothing," I respond finally. She doesn't believe me, no surprise there, but what she doesn't know right now won't hurt her. As long as she stays away from them.

"What's going on?" Someone appears behind me, asking the same question, and I sigh. The girl from Eight, who's even shorter than Farren is. She's trying to lean around me to see with little success.

"Nothing," I repeat, at the same time the Eight guy does. He's just behind her, probably has about the same view I do. Is this year just all of us trying to stop our District partners from prematurely going after someone? The Eight girl doesn't seem deterred, though; she scrambles up into _our_ chariot to get a better view and scowls at the scene.

"You are not going over there," the Eight guys says flatly.

"Yeah, because I was totally interested in getting piledrived today, Vance."

Farren laughs, but is apparently interested enough to scramble up beside her, back into the chariot, to get her own look.

"That really isn't good. Shouldn't someone stop them from fighting?"

"Not unless someone starts throwing punches," Vance says, and hops up into the chariot behind them. "No point otherwise."

I would say some of the officials in the immediate area almost look excited at the prospect of someone fighting this early on. They're the only ones, then. Every single one of the tributes looks mildly concerned, even the other Careers. I guess their concern is more along the lines of them having to get involved rather than it actually being a bad thing, though.

Better them than us. The Four girl's already got a black eye from her sister - I don't want to be the next one.

"What's going on?" someone new asks, for the third time, and I sigh _again_. Before I can even respond the Eleven girl is also in our chariot, shoving her head in-between Farren and Vance trying to get a good look. Behind me, her partner sighs. Almost as loud as I did. It doesn't take long before he's joining her up there, even though he's a solid half a foot taller than me and probably doesn't even need to. At the rate we're going half the tributes are going to end up in our chariot.

"Is there even any point in saying nothing anymore?" I wonder, and Farren grins down at me.

"Nope."

"I just wanna see," the Eleven girl says.

"What you're going to do is break the damn thing," I point out. It would be kinda funny to see, if I'm being honest with myself.

The more I watch the five of them there, the more I realize that it really doesn't matter. I can try all I want to stop them, but it really doesn't matter. There's a decent crowd of people looking our way now too, probably wondering what the hell we're all doing.

"I'm gonna go over there," Eleven decides, and she's got one leg literally _over_ the side of our chariot ready to hop down before her partner gets a hand on her and drags her back in.

"You are not."

"You're no fun!"

So that explains why he's up there, then. If I had to guess she probably has a habit of booking it and he has a habit of stopping her when she tries it. So we really are just spending our time trying to reign in our District partners. Should've seen that one coming.

A minute later and Seven is walking back across the room, towards his own chariot. The Twos both look spectacularly annoyed, but I've come to associate that with most Twos. They really never look very friendly, do they? Everyone up above me keeps staring like they're waiting for someone to resume the fight. I cross my arms over my chest, waiting for someone to move.

Nope.

"Alright, show's over," I announce. "Everyone quit it before you really do break it."

Farren hops out instantly, giving me a sheepish grin. The Eleven girl hops out and elbows me in the side.

"Just because you're dressed like a stop light doesn't mean you can tell me to stop!"

"Wow, that's funny," I deadpan, but she's already gone. Her partner sighs again, as many sighs as it's been minutes since they arrived over here.

"Sorry about her. I'm Zion, and that's—"

Whoever she is, she yells something back at him that I don't even make sense of. He turns to go, offering a weak wave over his shoulder at the four of us.

"Oeshe," he finishes. "Again, sorry. See you guys later."

It really does appear like he's her handler, though that's probably their mentor's fault. Someone's gotta watch her and he got stuck with the job. I'm kind of blessed that Farren doesn't put me through that. District Six it-girl extraordinaire and not only has she very firmly decided that we're allies, but she's literally refusing to leave my side. It's kinda nice, for once.

I still haven't figured out why. She's got a dozen other options, but I don't think she cares.

It makes me feel bad, knowing that she has better options and won't really consider them.

Maybe it's always been a we thing, though.

Maybe I just need to accept that.

* * *

Finally getting to the POVs I actually wanted to write is like watching an actual Christmas miracle come to life. And it's really not.

Thanks for all the reviews, I still read and appreciate and treasure each and every one of them.

Until next time.


	12. Ideas Are Bulletproof

Training, Part One.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

The Head Trainer _literally_ never shuts up.

I get that she's had the job for thirty odd years or so, but you'd think the woman would've lost her voice by now with how long her current tangent is. I tuned out about a minute and a half in, Dimara even less than that. To my surprise it looks like even Rory's zoned out, staring at the wall above the woman's head. That's how bad it is.

Watching her open the doors is like a blessing I never knew I needed.

"We're free," I mutter under my breath. Rory holds an arm out in front of me before I can even move.

"Hold on. Blair! Grab her for a second."

Blair whirls around, apparently trying to figure out who the hell's asking him to do what. He catches sight of us and grabs the back of Anya's shirt before she can get any further past him, tromping over to the three of us.

"What's up?"

I don't know. I don't know why I'm still being forced to stand here either. Rory is staring at all of us expectantly, like one of us is supposed to be talking. After a moment he takes a deep breath.

"Seriously? We're not even going to try this?"

"Try what?" I ask, feigning innocence. He knows enough by now that he can tell that I'm just screwing with him, but it's still pretty satisfying.

"This— the Career Pack, or whatever we want to call it. We're not even going to try that?"

Last time I checked he could see perfectly fine, so I don't know if he missed Tavian going completely rogue on us yesterday or not. I swore he saw that with his own two eyes, but maybe not. I don't know what he's playing at here. I didn't walk away from him on the train with the intention of coming crawling right back begging for us to be six strong. Or five I guess, now.

No one's said a word. Anya's staring at Dimara and I, like she's waiting for us to speak up.

No one does.

"Good talk guys!" Blair announces, and promptly leaves.

I can tell Anya is torn about this. I think she wanted this to work almost as much as Rory did. I think it would've been easier, if Tavian hadn't left. If him and Dimara had actually made a pact to stay together on the way here. Maybe that would've changed things. But Dimara did the same thing with Tavian that I did to Rory; I'm not about to blame her for it.

After another moment of terribly awkward silence, Anya walks away. That leaves Rory to stare at _me_ , because I don't think he feels comfortable enough to try it on Dimara yet. This would be so much easier to ignore if he would just quit it with the damn puppy dog eyes. He's staring to make me feel bad and I said I would under no circumstances feel bad about this. Not today, not ever. He's not going to get me.

"Look," I start. "If Blair wants to go off on his own, he can. Same with Anya. But I'm not pretending for your sake that this is going to work. For once I'm not screwing with you. You're not stupid, either. You can figure it out."

"And what about you two?" Rory asks.

Dimara glances at me. When we somehow got lost in the hallways on the way to the chariots yesterday it was Dimara we ended up with, because apparently she didn't know where the hell she was going either. It's not hard to tell that Rory's not exactly fully comfortable with people he just met, so it was Dimara and I that ended up talking. That ended up getting along too well.

We've been together since then. And I don't really see us separating.

The weird thing is, all of us want allies. Anya clearly does, Rory too, and even Blair who for all intents and purposes looks like he was designed purely to be a lone wolf. I think all of us work better with a group, that's how we were raised, how we were trained.

If only they could put six perfectly compatible people together every year.

I don't even think we have to say anything to Rory for him to figure that out.

"I— alright. I'm sorry, then," he says after a moment, and I feel something in me twinge. Absolutely not. No feeling bad here. I refuse.

When he stuffs his hands in his pockets and walks off, I might just have to admit it.

"Am I the only one that he makes immensely sad?" Dimara asks. "I feel like I just kicked a puppy. And I didn't even say anything."

Well, at least it's just not me. I don't think it's the Career Pack, or the lack thereof, that makes me sad. I think it's the fact that he's sorry about it, like it's somehow it's fault. It's all of us, but clearly he thinks he deserves to take the brunt of it.

I shake my head. I'm done with this feeling already, with this idea that things in some other universe could be perfect.

"Okay. Let's go. I need to hit something."

"Your sister isn't here," Dimara says calmly, and _okay_ , we haven't even talked about that and she's already joking about it. This is going to go splendidly, clearly. I jab her in the side and she leaps away, towards the doors. We're the only ones still standing here, talking like idiots. The Head Trainer is still staring at us with her blank, gray stare.

"You don't quit it it's going to be you."

She sticks her tongue out at me, the unspoken _as if you would actually_ hanging in the air between us, and I already know it's true.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

I'm in the process of trying not to knock everything over at the camouflage station when Farren shows up.

The trainer has been side-eyeing me for a while, probably wondering if I know what the hell I'm doing. I'm the only one over here currently - most of the others apparently decided to start training with a bang and went right for the weapons.

I'll do that eventually, obviously, but there's a lot more to look at over here. Stuff I've never seen in Eight, never would have in a hundred years. I'd be willing to bet that three containers of these paints and a brush is probably worth more than my own life to the people here. I might as well actually see what's it all about while I'm still here. While I'd like to think I'd have a chance in a few weeks, I don't know if that's worth sparing a thought to right now.

I've hardly cracked open a few of the jars when Farren sits down on the bench a foot down, opposite side, staring at what I'm doing.

I expect her to say something, but she doesn't. It should be awkward, too, but I'm so used to my friends at home just staring at me and at each other when we do these sorts of things that it's just familiar.

I'm also used to Pax accidentally ruining the things we create, even if he shouldn't bother saying it was an accident, but Farren keeps her hands firmly at the edge of the table and doesn't move. Probably convinced, almost like I was, that any unnecessary movement will amount to something.

"I'm sorry, is this weird?" Farren asks finally. It's got to have been several minutes by now. "My art teacher hates me. It's just weird to see someone who's good at it."

I smile. "Nah, you're good. What should I do?"

"What?"

"Any ideas? This is kinda more supplies than what I'm used to."

She looks pensive for a moment. "A sunflower? I don't know. I just told you I'm terrible at this."

The last and only time I've ever seen a sunflower in my life was when Aubrey decided to break into the florist's, for whatever reason, and it had taken her less than twenty seconds to knock over a vase full of them onto the floor. And we never really had the color range, back at home, to replicate that. Then again, sunflower's aren't usually my thing. Leaving those in the back alleys won't inspire anything, not really. Maybe it would brighten someone's day but it doesn't make people think, not like our abstracts and our murals and everything else we left behind there.

"So what's Casper doing? Also, pass me that yellow."

Farren passes one of the yellow shades in front of her over to me. I've already collected about six of them. "No idea, honestly. He's the one that told me to come over. I was already thinking about it but he kinda shoved me over here."

Casper's been looking over here for a while now, chancing glances when he thinks we're not looking his way. Farren's got her back to him but I can see him clear as day. He's not exactly being subtle about it.

"I didn't think he'd want other allies, but he keeps encouraging me to talk to other people. It's just weird," she continues. "I don't know what the hell he's thinking and he won't tell me, either."

To a complete stranger it's not hard to tell that her and Casper are completely different people, so I can't help but wonder if that's part of it. They seem pretty familiar to each other, school friends or something close. The whole time at the chariots yesterday he had almost the same look on his face. Blank but not blank enough to hide how he was looking at all of us, like something didn't quite fit.

Maybe that something is him.

"Well, if he's trying to push us to be allies I'm not about to say no," I say. "I just don't want to feel like I'm messing something up."

"Hold on," Farren announces. She gets up before I can even agree and is taking off for where Casper is most definitely not tying knots but just sitting there. She drags him back over to our table and shoves him down onto the bench.

"Why," is all he says flatly, staring at everything on the table, and then at me. Maybe that's guilt at being found out, but I don't know quite yet. All I know is that this doesn't work if we're not all in on it. There's no way I'm about to shove Casper out just to further myself.

"If we're going to be allies then you're going to help us."

"Ms. Rybeck hates me even more than she hates you. She hates everyone. Why do you think she's divorced?"

Farren hits him in the side of the head with a paintbrush and he snatches it out of her hand, offering it back to me. "Don't let her abuse me with these."

She makes a face, first at him and then at me when I refuse to give the brush back to her.

Nothing's perfect from the get-go. Not art, not this. I have to remind myself of that.

Besides, it always turns out to be pretty amazing in the end.

* * *

 **Olympia Kuidas, 13 years, District Eight Female.**

* * *

Vance going off with the Sixes makes me feel sick.

They're not bad people. They proved that yesterday. But him allying with them inches my casket closer to shut more than ever. I don't think Vance was even ever opposed to the idea of allying with me. But my chances are looking slimmer now that he has other people to turn to.

I shouldn't be angry at Vance, but I want to be. It should be easier for me and harder for him. He's the one that leaves art everywhere he shouldn't, for no reason at all that I've discerned. Most artists leave a signature, and until now it didn't make any sense. But watching him with them now, painting like it's nobody's business, it doesn't take a rocket science to connect the V on District Eight's walls to him.

He's not doing to hurt me, any of it. And if he can find people that quick then so can I.

Eventually, I make my way over to the Tens. Allying with people the same age as me wasn't the game plan, necessarily, but if I have to start lower and work my way up then I can work with that.

The thing is, though, none of them seem interested. Those two are inseparable, have been since day one. We exchange pleasantries, like most people have been doing already, but there's nothing there. I get why they're so close, watching them, but it doesn't seem like there's anywhere for me to fit.

The two of them are looking at knives like they're ever going to get a real shot at using them.

They know it won't work, and I do too.

Houston wanders off first, followed closely by Kelsea. She waves at me as she goes but I can't even muster the energy to wave back.

So that's the Tens off the list. The Careers and all the crazies in that other alliance that's already getting too big. Vance and the Sixes.

That leaves, what? Less than ten people?

We've been in training an _hour_.

"You okay?"

I turn, still holding one of the knives that Kelsea had been looking at. That's Zion from yesterday. He's looking at the weapons too but making no real effort to pick any of them up. I have no idea how long he's been standing there, watching me have a silent meltdown. It's not like someone his size is exactly subtle.

"No," I decide, and put the knife back on the weapon's rack with a little bit more force than necessary. The whole thing rattles and creaks and the trainer gives me a dirty look for my efforts.

"Can I help?" Zion asks slowly. He watches as the weapons finally stop swaying back and forth.

"Can you magically pull a few random people out of the universe to be allies with me?"

He stares at me. I pick the knife back up again.

"No? Then you can't."

I'm almost tempted to hit the dummy beside me with it and see what kind of damage it does, but I'm almost convinced I'd end up embarrassing myself. That's the last thing I need right now, when my confidence has already taken a massive hit today. I don't get a chance to, though. Zion holds his hand out for the knife and I give it to him without a fight.

"Would you want to be allies with me?"

" _What_?" I ask incredulously. He shrugs. "Are you serious?"

Despite not knowing him I don't take him as the kind to joke around, to say something like that lightly. The thing is, it makes zero sense. Of all the people here and he's asking _me_. You're telling me another thirteen year old and a twelve year weren't particularly interested but all of a sudden Zion is?

"I'd really prefer not being screwed with right now," I inform him, just as he opens his mouth. "It's not my brand of funny."

"I swear I'm not," he says. "To be honest, I kind of expected it to go this way. Any other alliance is going to expect things from me right from the start, expect me to do things that I'm not capable of doing. And I don't think you will. If you want an ally, I'm offering. That's it. No hidden agenda, no ulterior motive."

I did not expect this. And to think I usually see everything coming.

"You remind me of my little sister," he admits. "One of them, anyway. And I said I would try for her, for my family. I'm hoping you can help me out with that."

Maybe he's almost as desperate as I am, if he's willing to ask a thirteen year old for help. Or maybe he's telling the truth. But it's like I said; I don't take him as the kind to joke around, or to take things like this lightly. He's got a family that needs him back home, just like I do.

I know the things I'm willing to do to get that back. If I have to help him realize those same things, then I can do that.

"Deal," I decide, and hold out my hand towards him. He looks down at it in amusement but quickly takes it in his own, shaking firmly. I can't even see my hand, hidden in his own. To a degree I think we're both underestimated - but I know I'm capable of more than they think and that Zion could be full of surprises.

I'm not just a terrified thirteen year, just like he's not all quiet, formidable giant.

They'll see that soon enough.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

"You're really doing this?" Jaeden asks.

I don't know if I should be doing this, but the thought has certainly been there for a while now. To be honest, I didn't even think Jaeden was paying attention. He's been sitting behind me, attempting to start a fire without nearly enough supplies to actually accomplish it, for a while now. I didn't know where else to go right away and he didn't tell me to fuck off, so I considered that an accomplishment.

I know how to handle myself, though. How to survive things I shouldn't have had to.

And the thing is, this alliance can't do anything to me that hasn't already been done.

"Sure am," I decide, and hop off the table. He looks back down towards his pile of sticks.

"Your funeral, then."

"Says the one going at it alone."

The thing is, I think we're both solitary by nature. Jaeden just won't change that, and I'm more than willing to. It's not what I want to do, but this isn't about what I want. It's never been about what I want, here or before this. I've been debating about this for a while now, watching that alliance across the room. They haven't ripped each other's throats out, so that's an impressive feat. The thought of that happening doesn't even scare me.

Then again, not much does these days.

The One guy is off on his own, doing something with swords, but the other three are still lurking around each other, managing to clear the area around them without even saying anything.

Seven girl doesn't move at all, but Camden does, followed closely by the Five girl. Figures, because he's the only one who's name I've bothered remembering thus far. No point in picking out anyone other than the leader until you're in the thick of it. I'm not about to get ahead of myself.

"Nadir," I offer, holding my hand out. "District Twelve. How many spots you still got left?"

A joke but not so much that it's insulting him. God knows that won't get me anywhere fast. It's not hard to figure out how people like him work, what makes him tick. Sure enough, he smiles, and it's not one of those leering ones he's given some of the other people he's trying to make cry or intimidate. Good start. Five still doesn't look all that impressed, but I'm pretty sure that's her normal.

"Pretty sure we've still got a few," he informs me. "You want one?"

There's no way it should be this easy. Maybe Camden's seen the dissent around him, though. Maybe he's realized that things aren't always going to go his way, if his argument with the Two's yesterday was any indication.

That, or he's just taking anyone he can get to see what happens.

Both options are likely.

"I'd love one," I say, smiling, even if it's not necessarily the truth. I don't really think I was meant to love any alliance I'd end up in, that's not who I am. But I spent so long wondering if I should, the two sides warring inside me.

One had to win eventually.

"Welcome to the team, then. This is Isi. Tavian's over by the swords. And my District partner, Tanis."

Isi smiles, too much like a shark for my liking, and shakes my hand. Tanis doesn't even look up from whatever manual she's reading and just gives me a thumbs up, apparently trying to figure out how to make a wire snare. When I glance back Jaeden's not even looking this way. It appears he's got his fire going, now, a small blaze that looks likely to grow bigger.

Camden goes back to whatever he was doing, something involving stupidly heavy blunt weapons and after smiling uncomfortably at me for a few more seconds Isi turns to follow.

"Wrong move, dude," Tanis says behind me, still focused on her snare.

"What?"

"Coming over here. Just a bad idea in general."

"Then why are _you_ here?" I ask her.

"Right now you're either with him or against him. Some more obvious than others. The people who stay in the middle are the smart ones. You were in the middle until you came over here. As for me, I think being with him is going to be easier than running away from him."

I knew that's the type of person Camden was going to be, but I'm still unprepared to hear the words said out-loud, by someone else. Tanis seems very sure of it.

"You couldn't have said that before?" I question.

"Call me self-absorbed, but if this alliance does end up working, he'll kill me in two seconds flat. I think Tavian will stick with me, but that's still two versus two. And based on who else he was thinking, he might tip it in his favor."

Well, that's certainly an idea. Say this alliance does get it's shit together and makes it far, eventually it has to split. We're all trying to be on the right side of the numbers, when that happens. I've been at war with Thane for months now with little success; I'm not going to delude myself into thinking I could take on Camden. Not by myself. But with others...

"Not a bad idea," I admit.

"No?"

"No. Not at all."

I hold out my fist towards her. It takes her a moment to realize, but when she does she drops the wire and smiles, just the smallest quirk of her mouth, before she bumps her fist against my own.

We may be headed for a trainwreck, eventually.

But I'm more than used to those.

* * *

Training's my fave.

Not much to say this time, other than the fact that I'm really excited about everything that's coming up in the near future. Thank you for the reviews!

Until next time.


	13. Turn Up The Crazy

Training, Part Two.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

I don't think it comes as a surprise to either Laurel or I that Parker eventually trickles back to the two of us.

It was never really a distinct thing, either. It had taken us a few hours to notice but Parker was slowly following us to more and more stations by the minute. He still kept to himself most of the time, engrossed himself in the mental aspect over the physical.

Currently, I'm watching the two of them try to work the knives. The only reason I really haven't is because I'm still convinced on some level that I'll end up prematurely stabbing myself. Besides, no point in going for the easiest thing yet. There's ton of other weapons around; spears and swords that are intimidating just to look at, more blunt weapons off to my left. The Three girl is over there, holding a mace and staring at the three of us like she can make us disappear.

"Be right back," I announce. Laurel nearly whacks me with her ponytail as she turns to watch me go.

There's really nowhere for Three to run, not unless she wants to drop the mace right on the floor and take her chances booking it around me. I grab an axe off the stand across from her and I can feel her eyes on the back of my head the entire time.

I have zero idea what I'm doing here. It still makes me feel better, holding a weapon in my hands, even though I have no idea how to really use it.

"Can I help you?" I ask, feigning politeness, with no idea of why I'm even asking. I turn towards one of the dummies.

"Nope!"

Not exactly the answer I was expecting, but then again, I still haven't even figured out why I bothered asking in the first place. I don't know who she is, or what she wants. Do I really care? Everyone here wants something, I'm coming to find out.

I hit the dummy. Some of it's fluffy insides come spilling out of the crack I made in it's chest.

"Don't mind her," Parker interrupts. He's put the knives back down, and points at the dummy. "She's just looking to start fights with everyone. You're probably not going to get a clear shot at the heart if it's an actual person you're fighting. Femoral artery in the leg is probably best - they'll bleed out before they can get any help. Useful if you're trying to run away too."

"Don't wanna know why you know that, dude."

Parker may not be the most physically intimidating person in the world, but he's proving more and more that he's basically a human dictionary. It's a little worrying, that he knows so much, but it's not like I spent my spare time reading up on this stuff and I know Laurel didn't either.

It's probably best that at least one of us knows random, probably useless real-world facts. This obviously isn't the real world anymore.

"I'm not looking to start shit with _anyone_ ," Three says eventually, looking annoyed.

"Sure you aren't," I agree. "Why does your District partner look like he's going to rip your throat out any time you get within five feet of him?"

That I _have_ noticed, at least, but it's not exactly hard to. We've got no shortage of murderous glances going around currently, but his seems to stand out from the rest. As does how quickly she darts away when he goes to stand up.

She really is just trying to rile him up, at this point.

"She's probably not that bad of a fighter," Parker points out. "She could be useful. No offense to Laurel, but I don't think she's going anywhere fast with those knives. And I won't pretend that I am either."

"I can hear you," she says angrily. Coming from anyone else I think I would be a little worried. Her partner, surely. She just looks like a very pissed off, very small dog that's going to attack my ankles any second. But I wouldn't ever tell her that to her face. We'd be putting that idea to the test really fast that way, and I like my ankles the way they are.

"What's your name?"

"None of your business," she spits. She does drop the mace, right at the ground by her feet, and then spins off and walks very purposefully in the opposite direction. If there was even anything over there I'd be a little impressed.

"You really think we should try?" I ask Parker. He nods.

"I'm not lying to myself here, and you aren't either. I don't think our chances for getting someone that's actually a good fighter are that high - she's probably our next best option. Her name's Early, by the way."

"Why didn't you tell me that sooner?" I ask. Let's add social skills to the list of things that Parker apparently doesn't have down pat. Maybe if I had known that she wouldn't have walked away so quick. I don't know how we'd deal with her, aggressive as she is. Maybe giving her time right now is the wise option, as Parker would put it. I don't know how she'll feel in a days time, two maybe, but it can't be any worse than how she feels now.

Besides, aggression is a thing I think we're in short supply of, over here. Maybe Early will see the benefit of being the one we all rely on, if it's not going to be me.

We'll have to wait and see if that's a good thing or not.

* * *

 **Camden Kershaw, 18 years, District Seven Male.**

* * *

Things are going just as planned.

The alliance is coming along, as to be expected. I won't get any more of the Careers; they solidified that themselves. There's still a few more possibilities, even after Nadir. All of those people, though, are currently engrossed in their own activities. No point in interrupting them, causing them grief when I know I'll need them later on.

That leaves only one thing to do, really. And it's far too good to pass up.

Blair's been over by the swords for a while now. He didn't spend any time over there yesterday, so they're probably not his first choice. Despite them not being together in the traditional sense most of the Careers have been lurking around each other anyway, years of that very same idea being ingrained so deep into their heads that they don't know what else to do.

It's Blair that's the only one alone, currently. Easy target.

I make sure Tavian's not far behind when I make my move on Blair. Let him pick a side, truly, now rather than later. If he supports Blair in this, he's done. Nadir's lurking somewhere around here too. Good. Let her see it.

He's about to pick up a sword when I slam my hand over it and send it clattering back onto the rack, the blunted edges digging into the palm of my hand. Blair stares at the sword for a second and then looks up at me.

"Oh, my lucky day."

"Sure is," I say grinning. Man, he has no idea.

Blair's a weird one, that's for sure. I saw too much of myself reflected back at me in his eyes when I was talking to him at the chariots. And I've been wondering, since then, if he's got the same buttons I do. If our situations are anywhere near the same. That slightest bit of weakness on his face when I mentioned him not being the chosen volunteer... it's too intriguing _not_ to wonder.

"Sorry," Blair begins. "But there's no babies around here for you to eat for breakfast. You'll have to look elsewhere."

Tavian, still behind me, is too blank-faced to be considered normal at all. Why is everyone here so weird?

"Think I'm good here."

"Of course you are. What's it going to be about today?"

"Oh, you know, the works. Just wondering who was supposed to volunteer instead of you. They had to have been a lot better, right? Or did you fuck something up so bad that they decided someone else was the safer bet?"

I don't know if it's annoyance at my words or just towards me in general, but he looks angry again. Both of us still have one hand on the sword. If the edges weren't dulled down I'd reckon the trainers would have one hell of a mess to clean up soon. His hand's around the hilt but mine's around the blade - I could rip it away from him before he even managed to really get me.

"Do you just enjoy fucking with people?" Blair asks.

"Well, we have similar natures, do we not? Maybe you're talking about yourself too." And there it is, the proof. Because he gets angrier. If it weren't true he wouldn't be getting angry about it, and yet he is.

Nadir's been creeping closer and closer, probably trying to hear. I can't say I blame her. This is most definitely worth hearing.

"I don't even think you realize," Blair says. "That we couldn't be further apart. I'm sure you'll realize soon enough. I'm sure—"

"No," I interrupt. "I'm sure _you'll_ realize. I think we're more similar than you're aware of. You weren't the chosen volunteer, Two. So what was it? Did the perfect little District really set you aside for someone else? Did they decide one day that you just weren't good enough? Did you start to wonder if it was really true, if you were good enough or not? Is that why you're so angry? Did you start believing it? Did you start falling prey to all of the voices whispering in your ear; not good enough, not good enough, _never good enough_. Do you think that's why you've hated me since day once, since I opened my mouth? Do you look in the mirror and see me looking back at you?"

I knew it. I knew it the second I first spoke to him.

His free hand clenches by his side. If I get punched for this it's going to be the most worthwhile thing that's happened in _years_. It'll only give me quicker permission to beat him into bloody non-existence.

Tavian, behind me, almost moves. I see it, the hesitance. Wondering if he should intervene, maybe tell me to take a step back.

He doesn't move. Nadir is still watching.

"Believe me, Blair. I know it when I see it. And I've been seeing it firsthand for _years_."

If someone had said these words to me, I'd have knocked their teeth out. I sound so unbelievably calm compared to how Blair looks, and that only makes it more satisfying. To turn it back on someone else after all this time. Something there hit home, or maybe all of it.

Like I've said, I've been seeing it for years. I've been living it.

I see his hand clench again, and then move, almost in slow motion. I was almost convinced that he had managed to reign himself in, that he wasn't going to give me that satisfaction.

This isn't about satisfaction, though. This is all anger. Warranted anger, in the very least.

And when his fist cracks into my jaw, it's completely worth it.

* * *

 **Rodrik Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male**

* * *

"Oh, _shit_."

Of course I'm not looking the right way when it happens. In fact, I'm the only one _not_ looking. Maybe I should've clued in, when gradually Celia and Anya and Dimara let all their weapons fall to their side, leaving me the only one who was still doing something productive.

But I don't. And so when I turn around at Celia's words and the _crash_ that reverberates around the room, she's already left us and is halfway to where Blair and Camden have apparently decided that right now is the prime time to have a fist fight in the middle of the training center.

Dimara claps her hands together and cackles just as Anya takes off towards them too.

"Okay, you need to help me!" I shout at her. She's still laughing but she gets to her feet, wiping fake tears out of her eyes.

Tavian's already gotten involved, probably trying to pry the two of them apart before there's any more damage done, but it doesn't look like he's having much success. Celia's the first one there, Anya not far behind her, and if I thought for a damn second that either of them were going to try and stop this rather than getting involved then I'd be a very, very stupid person.

I get there at the same does Isi does, two trainers right on her heels. She shoves me in the side and somehow manages to get involved even more quickly than Celia did. Speaking of, Celia's got one of Camden's legs and has managed to drag him several inches across the ground, though with how close together him and Blair are I don't know how much good that's doing. Anya's got both of her hands in the back of Blair's shirt, though again, that's doing absolutely nothing in the long run to help this situation, no matter how hard she's trying.

The trainers are more focused on the source of the fight. Dimara grabs Tavian by the collar of his shirt and literally hauls him three feet away, dropping him unceremoniously on the ground. I make for Celia, locking one of my hands around her arm.

She whirls on me, eyes narrowed. "If you even _try_ it—"

"Okay, got it, backing up now," I manage, and grab Anya instead. Probably should've done that in the first place, considering she's by far the smallest. It's almost too easy to drag her back and up off the two of them. She nails me in the shin just once before I lift her completely off the ground, held back by both of my arms.

"Are you fucking serious," she grumbles, as I start backpedaling away from the situation. She stops struggling, at least. One of the trainers has Isi up off the ground now and the other one has just managed to pry Blair and Camden apart as Dimara shoves her way between them.

"You totally broke his fucking nose, that's incredible!" Dimara crows, just before I place Anya on the nearest bench. Celia's got Blair up, now, and although his face is covered in blood his nose still looks straight.

God, I should not feel glad that it was Camden's nose, and not his.

Anya mutters something under her breath, looking up at me. "This is fucking ridiculous."

There are a million things she could be referring to. I can't stop thinking about how ridiculous it was, how fast we all moved when it broke out. Not allies, apparently, but I think that bond is still there whether we want it to be or not.

I think Anya's thinking it too.

"We're really the only two that wanted this to work, aren't we?" I ask in defeat. She seems to settle down as she watches the group disperse, as the trainers fix the situation. One of the trainer takes Camden off. His face really goes look godawful. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise that Blair threw the first punch.

"It's all I was ever taught," she says. "I didn't know what the hell else I was supposed to do. Maybe those lessons are only taught once you hit sixteen."

It's easy to forget that she's younger than all of us. She certainly doesn't seem it, or act like it at all. The pace at which she moved today after Celia made her seem a lot older.

"Thanks for pulling me out," she says, after a moment. "Probably shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place."

Something tells me that if it happened again in three seconds we'd still have the same result anyway, regardless of what she says. I sit down on the bench next to her, leaning against the table.

"Me and you?" I ask, out of nowhere. I have nothing else at this point anyway. Blurting it out isn't going to make matters any worse. I'm already pulling people out of fights that shouldn't have happened in the first place because no one knows how to shut their mouths and leave other people alone. I should have prepared myself for this, the anger and animosity.

I still hate it. I don't think I ever won't.

"Sure," she agrees, easy as that, and leans her head into her hands. There are still some trainers standing over the spot where it happened in the first place, but everyone's been pulled apart by now.

I hate the hostility, but I think I hate this feeling even more. That we're all just fractured, broken things waiting for the next fight to break out.

Maybe that's all we ever were.

* * *

 **Oeshe Ito, 18 years, District Eleven Female.**

* * *

I have to admit, that was pretty awesome.

You definitely don't see stuff like that every day in Eleven. Most of the time it's Peacekeeper's beating innocent, unsuspecting folks into the ground for the most trivial things, or just because they _can_.

It seems the Careers aren't too far from that themselves.

"I was about to say that was some sexual tension going on," I say, as the One and Four girls come back to their previous spot. "But then they started punching each other and it got weird. So maybe I should re-think that."

It was a good spot to watch, when it all went down. As long as I wasn't running headlong over to get involved Zion seemed content to leave me here, even though he kept one eye on me the entire time. I didn't really think the Careers would come back here, after it was all over. They've taken the Two guy off too, probably just to check that his face is still mostly intact. Maybe the two of them don't have anything better to do.

"Should've gotten involved," One says. "It was fun."

"You're sure having a lot more fun than me," I complain. I jerk my thumb back at Zion. "He won't let me have any."

To his credit, he's now looking at me incredulously, probably wondering why the hell I'm talking to two Careers. Why not, though? I just wanted to have have some fun myself and it sure looks like this is the most effective way to have it. I'll fall asleep trying to have fun with him and his only thirteen year old ally. Talk about a snooze-fest.

If you can't beat them join them, and all that jazz.

If they'll have me, that is.

"I'm Oeshe," I inform them, still sitting on my hands. Though I didn't take them as the type to be that overly polite anyway, especially not to someone from Eleven. It's not like we're ever exactly one of their first choices.

"Dimara, and this is Celia. Have you ever considered punching your District partner, then? He might leave you alone after that."

"No. He's annoying but in that overly protective kinda way. I think I'd feel bad. And I _never_ feel bad about stuff like that, not even when I do it to my own brother."

"Oh, so you're in the same boat as Celia then," Dimara says, abnormally calm, but Celia gives her a dirty look and I can't help but giggle. Sure, I've never actually publicly and seriously fought with my brother, because it's always been a joke to both of us, but the coincidence is funny enough before you add our separate District partner issues to it all.

I watch Dimara pick up everyone's discarded weapons, starting to hang them back up on the racks. Across the room one of the trainers is just starting to pick up the fallen weaponry rack that they knocked over during their fight, swords and knives scattered all over the place

"Do you think we'll get anything else like that?" I ask curiously.

"Probably not." Celia shrugs. "Not gonna let them anywhere each other again after that. Anyone else is free game now, though. If you're going to start anything feel free to let us know. I have no qualms in getting involved again. I don't think any of us do, not really."

Something tells me her District partner would have something to say about that, but he doesn't really matter right now, just like Zion doesn't either.

What matters is this, and the fact that they haven't chased me off yet like they would to so many others.

"Are you that willing to fight?" Dimara asks, leaning forward a little curiously. She's holding onto the spear that she had before, and to anyone else that would be unbelievably threatening. It almost kind of sounds like a threat as is.

"Why not?" I reply. "We're all going to have to eventually. That or die a gruesome death running away from someone because we refuse to. And I don't think either of you are about to run."

I know what I said, and what I really meant. Evidently I think both of them realize it as well. I said they weren't willing to run, but I meant it about myself as well. No one's going to catch me running away from a fight. I can already see it now, how many people will. Zion, surely. If I ever see him pull out a weapon and directly go after someone I'd probably fall over. I'd sooner die of a heart attack then I would with him coming after me.

Celia picks up her kama, lying at her feet, and then reaches over to toss me a machete. It takes a second of fumbling before I have it gripped firmly in my hands, though they either don't notice or are gracious enough to not point it out. Not a word I would have come to associate with them, if I hadn't had the nerve to come over here and learn what they were like first-hand.

Again, not like most Careers. But this isn't most years, either.

"Wanna start now?" Celia asks. Not a challenge this time, or a threat.

This is an offer.

"Not gonna refuse that," I say, and I smile. They both do as well, subtle enough that no one but us can see it. I don't think anyone around us will really see this coming.

As if anyone ever would.

I knew it was only a matter of time until the fun really began.

* * *

Me starting shit in training that is ultimately completely unnecessary: check.

Hope everyone's having a great month/week/day so far, considering it feels like we've been in January for 6 odd years or so.

Until next time.


	14. Only Survivors

Training, Part Three.

* * *

 **Farren Laboy, 17 years, District Six Female.**

* * *

The mood for today can only be defined as one thing, and that's uneasy.

Yesterday solidified it. Everyone was nervous, they had every reason to be, but now it's ten times worse.

It's not just the fight that happened. It's the realization that we only have a few hours left, until our scores are decided. The interviews tomorrow. And then after that, it's over. Half of the day is already through - we've got maybe 36 hours until things finally _happen_.

I'm pretty sure Casper is asleep, sitting against the rack holding the swords, but at least Vance is trying. I'm kind of worried that if I turn around for too long he'll impale himself, but I've also been afraid of that myself since the second we started training.

So at least we're in the same boat.

"Should we wake him up?" Vance asks finally. I half-expect Casper to move, but he doesn't even twitch.

"He's not going to get any sleep tonight. Or the night after that, probably."

"Should tell him to nap during his private session. See how they like that."

Right now, I wouldn't put it past Casper to actually do it. It's not like he's been sleeping anyway, he's got to make up for lost time somehow. I know he doesn't care about the score he gets regardless.

"You know it's gonna be up to us, right?" I ask him. He almost manages to lop the arm off a dummy, only a few loose cords keeping it attached at the shoulder. To be fair, an hour ago it didn't even look like he hit it, so. Baby steps for the both of us.

I think he at least gets it, though. I've been worried about Casper since this whole thing started. About how hard he'll be willing to try or about how he'll handle it all. Half the time he doesn't care and half the time he cares too much. That's why Vance is standing here right now, all because Casper thought it would be better to have someone other than him around.

It's not exactly encouraging.

Is he even going to care, once we get in there?

"Hey," Vance says softly. "Don't worry. We'll figure it out. You really think I'm going to complain about my situation right now? Contrary to popular belief it could still actually be worse."

He's right. One of us could be a loner right now, like some of the people still trickling, mindless and alone, around the room.

Casper may be asleep, but at least we have each other.

"We will figure it out," he repeats. "Maybe not on the sword front, though. You're even worse than I am."

"And to think I was about to say you were doing so much better," I say, laughing, and reach over to shove him in the shoulder. He narrowly avoids stepping on Casper, picking his way over his legs to pull another dummy closer to the two of us. He's laughing just like I am.

It's the truth, though. He is doing a lot better. I give him my own sword to put back on the rack and move for the knives instead. I wasn't doing too bad with them yesterday, according to the trainer, though it's still up for debate if she was giving me pity marks or not.

"I think the worst part is how non-intimidating you look," Vance points out. "You look like you're about to threaten to compliment me to death or something."

"I can be scary."

"Yep. I'm aware. It's not like you told me to envision the sword like a paintbrush two hours ago. Totally scary."

It seems like almost everyone here is scary or intimidating, though. On some level at least. No one's going to believe me if I try it. No point in pretending when everyone will see through the façade anyway.

Besides, it's not like Vance is any scarier, and Casper's asleep, for god's sake. No one's going to reward us for being scary.

It's the pair from Ten creeping around us that almost makes me re-think it. They don't look scared of us, necessarily, but wary. Maybe it's the fact that we're joking and laughing like we're anywhere but where we really are, Casper asleep at our feet like he doesn't have a care in the world. Then again, he doesn't. None that he's shared with me.

Vance has noticed it though, and nods at them. Smiles.

"You're good as long as you don't step on him. That I am not taking the blame for."

The girl laughs, and even the boy who's already proven himself to be quieter smiles, taking a step forward to grab his own sword. Vance has lowered his open weapon and I've followed suit without even realizing it. Appearing as non-threatening to people as possible, because that's not what they deserve.

Maybe that's foolish thinking. I should want to be a stronger, better person right now. The me that exists back in Six won't survive this. I already know that for a fact. The part of me that makes me who I am, that girl who's friends with everyone and who tries her damnedest to make sure that everyone's living their life, is all I've ever known how to be.

The issue is, I don't know how to get rid of that part without losing myself entirely.

Thirty-six hours. Less than that, now.

I can already hear the time, counting down quicker and quicker in my head.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

"You cannot put me in time-out."

The look on Celia's face is saying she absolutely, one hundred percent can put me in time-out. Dimara's is no better.

I knew the trainers we're going to keep an eye on me, but I didn't think that meant _everyone_.

I mean, I get it. The stylists will wring my neck if I end up with my face bruised even worse than it already is. But Camden's is _worse_ , even though they managed to fix his nose with whatever they shot him full of, and he started it in the first place, so they should be watching him. Not me. That's all I'm saying.

As if anyone was listening.

"I already have a black eye," Celia points out. "I don't need to get another one pulling your dumb ass out of fights."

"That's rich coming from the person who was the first outside party to get involved. Would you even be sad if you got another black eye?"

"She wouldn't," Rory interrupts, before Celia can even open her mouth. To his credit, I thought he was completely focused on hitting targets and wasn't listening at all. Turns out he can multi-task. Who knew.

"What Celia was so eloquently attempting to say is that we're trying to look out for each other here," Dimara says. "And no one else has went out of their way to be difficult about it."

Everyone here seems to be forgetting that Tavian exists and that he was on Camden's side yesterday, which leaves me to take the brunt of it. And it's not like Rory's about to start a fist fight. I think right now, with how he tried to grab her yesterday, he's afraid to even attempt touching Celia.

"Blair jail," Oeshe says out of nowhere. I scowl.

"You have no idea how not funny that is. Why are you even here again?"

"She's our ally," Dimara reminds me. "Stop being a dick."

Now I've got someone from _Eleven_ , of all places, looking at me like I'm a zoo animal. Just how I wanted my day to start off. She's still miles better than spending my time around Camden.

I don't know how to say out-loud that I can't stop thinking about the things he said. It's not like anyone here would really get it anyway. Oeshe is Dimara's ally, and Celia's, not mine. It's almost easy to forget when we're all talking that two days from now we won't be going into this together at all.

Rory's not even facing us when she says it, but I can tell he's wounded at that. That they wouldn't stick with him but they'd adopt Oeshe out of nowhere.

To be honest, I'm a little put off by it too.

I'd be more put off by it if she wasn't already expressing the same asshole qualities that most of this group seems to have.

"What's up?" Dimara asks. Celia's turned away, probably trying to intentionally or unintentionally mess up Rory's aim. I have no idea where Anya's wandered off to, and Oeshe seems to not really care at all about what she's asking me. All I can see is Camden across the way and that alliance.

"Nothing," I respond.

" _Blair_."

"My face hurts," I insist. Which isn't a lie, if we're being honest. I think they're with-holding the painkillers as a way to discourage me from doing it again. Lucky for them, it seems to be working.

"Should've thought about that before you broke his nose, then."

She knows that's not it. Everyone knows that's not it. I wouldn't have just punched him for fun; they know he had to have done something to deserve it. But Tavian seems to have kept his mouth shut and I have no idea if Nadir even really heard it or not.

It's not like it matters. Not here.

"Do you think they're going to release us for lunch soon?" I question. I think my eye's a little swollen - no amount of squinting will let me see the clock at the far end of the room.

"What, so you can start a food fight?" Anya asks, appearing to my left. Ah, there she is. As unwilling as ever to let yesterday go, apparently.

"I'll help!" Oeshe offers cheerfully. You know what, I've changed my mind. I think I like her just fine now.

I'm not going to do it again. I could've this morning, before anyone realized. Right now I'm a little tired and half hungry and a lot pissed off, mostly, about how all of this has been going. About the things that came out of Camden's mouth yesterday and how I did nothing but stand there and take it. Like it was my father over ten years ago or Mauro just last month telling me how to do things like he knows any better than I do.

If that's a testament to how my entire life's been up until this moment, then it's no wonder that I'm pissed off.

"Maybe I will start a food fight," I murmur thoughtfully, just to rile them up. Oeshe grins in delight. Rory gives me a look over his shoulder, half panic and half dread. Dimara just sighs and rolls her eyes, and then reaches forward like she's about to whack me in the face. She settles for my shoulder instead when I lean back, as far away from her hand as possible.

I wasn't kidding when I said my face hurt.

I won't let anything else happen, though. Nothing else is going to hurt this bad.

I've promised myself that.

* * *

 **Shirin Azami, 17 years, District Three Male.**

* * *

I'm wondering if the trainers will have a better reaction time today than yesterday.

If not, and it's the same, I'm wondering how fast I can take a part of Early off before she starts screaming.

I think she'd start wailing like a banshee the second I even got close, just to ruin it. Draw attention to it and nothing gets accomplished.

In the end, though, she wanders off. Maybe she was finally starting to clue into the fact that the longer she stayed the more likely she was to lose a finger or two. Some sort of carefully staged accident, of course, because there's nothing around here sharp enough to sever through bones, fragile though they may be.

I've hardly left the medical training area they've got set up the past three days. There hasn't been any reason to. The trainers stopped trying to get involved after the second hour on the first day. Since then they've hardly paid me any mind, let me do whatever I wanted.

Just how I like it.

It's weird, seeing it like this. They've got diagrams laid out and the contents of first aid kits spread out all along the table. The only things even remotely close to weapons here are medical instruments. Valuable, sure, and certainly plausible to use as a weapon if you were in a nasty situation.

I've never thought about it like that. My parents taught me what we did through first-hand experience, by watching people live and die depending on what we did. What _I_ did.

Even the trainers here don't really understand. I can see it in their eyes - they've never really dealt with the things I have. Never had to. There aren't factory explosions in the Capitol, collapsing buildings. They don't pull shards of metal and shrapnel out of people's ribs and lungs. Heart, if they're unlucky.

They just teach it, and hope that none of the kids here are smart enough to put it together. Aren't smarter than them.

They've quickly come to the realization that their match is here.

Three days spent picking apart dummies and diagrams and wondering if any of this was real to them at all.

I'm several minutes into sewing up a two inch long gash directly between a thumb and forefinger when someone sits down at the table behind me. I don't have to see it to know. Their presence is enough.

Whoever it is, they don't say anything. Judging by the fact that everyone except Early has steered clear of me the past three days, for good reason, I can narrow it down to about five people. The One guy's a no-go, and there's no way the Seven girl would willingly come over here, not unless someone was physically holding her there.

Still only one person there. Not the Twelve girl then, either. They wouldn't trust her with this.

I don't move. Eventually I feel whoever it is get up, but make no move to leave.

I snip the thread and tie off the ends just as the Five girl puts both of her elbows on the table and leans in obnoxiously close. Examining, it seems. She probably has about as much clue as the trainers do as to what she's supposed to be looking for.

"You're good at that, hey?"

Apparently we're just pointing out the obvious.

"Better than most," I inform her. My ego is no worse than hers is, so there's no way she'll take any offense to it. She walks around here like an ice queen more often than not.

"I can tell," she says. "You've been doing this since we started. No weapons?"

Everything I could ever possibly need is on this table. Like I said, maybe these things aren't ideal, not to most people, but they're practically extensions to my own arm. Nothing else is going to work better, if I need it to. My parents didn't teach me how to fight. They taught me this.

This is all I'll ever need.

"No point in using anything else. Are you going to announce your point anytime soon?"

I know what she's here for. And I wondered about it. They know I'm not a fighter, clearly. If she's not just the only one and they've all been watching me, they don't need me to say it to know.

"I'm Isi," she tells me. I notice she doesn't hold out her hand. "And we think you could be of some use to us."

Straight to the point. I can appreciate that. It's not like I was under the impression they wanted to sit around the fire together and sing songs. They're not in this for friends.

I wasn't in this for an alliance, either.

"You know I'm not a fighter," I say, quite obviously. They clearly know my name, no point in that. "I'm not fighting for any of you. Or dying for any of you, for that matter."

"We're not asking you to," she says sweetly, all the grace of a con artist.

"Besides," a voice behind me interrupts. "I'm no longer looking for fighters. We've got plenty of those. I'm looking for _survivors_."

Camden slams his hands down on the table in front of me, as if to emphasize his point. Not a bad way to do it, if a bit brutish.

Isi's still leaning forward, almost a little too eagerly. If I wasn't staring at the two of them so intently I'd know I'd see the rest of their alliance, watching. Waiting.

Camden smiles. "Are you a survivor, Shirin?"

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

Lunch, despite all the talk, is a very quiet affair.

Right after this they're lining us all up and taking us to our private sessions. That realization very slowly ripples out across the room, hitting every single person one by one. Some look terrified, others look like nothing at all.

It's a weird spectacle to watch.

Thankfully, it doesn't get any weirder. Blair seems pretty content with his food and isn't acting like he's about to hit Camden in the back of the head with an orange, so that's good. Not that I would be mad about it.

"Are you guys going to tell me to fuck off if I get a bad score?" Oeshe wonders, chewing on her fork. I'm pretty sure Rory's stolen something off her plate, and I just openly watched Blair do it thirty seconds ago. Not that she seems to care. They're not exactly being subtle about it.

"Sure are," I inform her, and on my other side, Celia snorts. Even Anya cracks a smile at that one, though she seems to be doing the same thing I was. Watching everyone else.

"If I do I'll just kill someone really fast to make up for it."

At the next table over, one of the Nine's looks alarmed at her choice of words. Zion's noise of disapproval, somewhere behind us, is audible across the room.

It's no secret here that the Careers are technically outnumbered here. Sure, if something went south I'm sure we'd stick up for each other. Yesterday proved that.

But when it's death instead of getting punched in the crossfire? I'm not so sure.

"Count me in," Celia agrees. "As many as we can in one sweep."

"Amen to that," Blair mutters under his breath, and him and Anya share a look. _There's_ something from a conversation I definitely wasn't privy to.

Apparently not even I can keep track of everything that goes on in this pack of weirdos.

The bell rings to signal the end of our lunch, but the doors to the training center stay firmly shut. Everyone stays in their spot, awkwardly hovering over the benches like they're not sure exactly what they're supposed to do. The Head Trainer steps into the room, with Celia muttering something under her breath the second she sees her, and everyone stops.

"Everyone please line up according to District, male and then female."

The entire room stares nervously for a second before moving to put themselves in a line. The way they're all looking around she might as well have just asked us to do a math problem.

"Great, no pressure or anything," Tavian says as he takes his position closest to the door, ready to be filed into the hallway.

"Remember, don't choke," I add helpfully and he narrows his eyes at me, staying silent. Probably wondering if I'm kidding or not. That's what he gets for allowing Camden to get a hold on him. He's a lost cause now and we all know it. We all have to grow up from the twelve year olds we were walking into the Academy, though.

"This isn't fair," Celia grumbles. "I literally can't even see around you."

"Why do you need to see?" Rory asks, distantly, just as Anya murmurs her own similar sentiments. "We're not going anywhere exciting."

Ah, the perks of having a giant District partner. That's why it's all the more satisfying that if I stretch myself I'm just the slightest bit taller than Tavian.

That quarter of an inch _counts_ , alright?

"Shut it back there, shorties," I say. Celia looks particularly affronted at that, but whatever she was about to say is cut off by Rory's hand over her mouth, and Anya doesn't get a chance at a rebuttal before the Head Trainer opens the door and leads us into the hallway.

It's not a long walk, but it almost feels like it. By the time we get to another set of doors, even heavier and larger than the one leading to the tribute center, it feels like too much time has passed. Tavian doesn't look nervous, not like most of the kids in this line do, but I clap a hand on his shoulder regardless.

"Forget what I said before," I say. "Alliance animosities aside for a second, don't actually choke."

He smiles, and nods. "Yeah. You too."

They don't even let him sit down. They wait until the rest of us take our seats at the benches along the walls and usher him in right in before anyone can get a word in otherwise.

When the doors clang shut behind him and the Peacekeepers take their positions on either side of it, it's almost nerve-wracking.

Almost.

I've spent years readying myself for this. Regardless of what's going on I don't want Tavian to do terribly. Right now there's no one to disappoint, no one to be overly critical of, besides myself. Celia will do fine. Oeshe too. I'm not worried about that stupidly big alliance or the capabilities they think they have. They can try to be scary all they want, it's not going to work on us for a damn second.

Where the walk here felt like it took too long, Tavian seems like he's back in no time at all. He's hard to read, as always, but looks optimistic, smiling slightly, as the doors open and they announce my name over the loudspeakers. It can't have been more than two or three minutes since they took him in, and all of a sudden it's my turn.

It feels different, being on the other side of the doors when they settle back into place, the noise echoing around the room.

It feels right.

* * *

For the third time in a row, training scores are up on the blog because there is no way in hell I was writing those.

Also coincidentally realized that I'm going to be across the country when I have to upload the bloodbath, so that should be one hell of an upload and blog edit while on mobile. Let you know how that goes when it happens.

Until next time.


	15. Interstellar

Interviews.

* * *

 **Isi Akiloff, 17 years, District Five Female.**

* * *

Finally, an opportunity for me to really shine.

Sure, the chariots I could navigate just fine. To me, though, those are still almost an attempt at humiliating us before the real fun begins. They wouldn't put us in such ridiculous costumes if they weren't.

This is much better. A dress more extravagant than even I'm used to, back home, but it still feels so much more natural. I'm used to people walking into a room and knowing where I come from, what I come from. Really, this is no different from going to a very important event with my father with even more important people and wondering how much I can change with just a single word.

That's what my job is. My father does the real work, of course. My mother too. No one's going to do things based on the whims of a seventeen year old girl they may not have even known before they stepped into the room. But I know what to look for, who seems like the weakest link in the crowd. It's always them that gives first, perhaps a secret no one else was supposed to know about the state of affairs in Five. It's always something useful. They never see it coming, either. I can't say I blame them for that; who would, when they think they've already distinguished the real sharks in the room?

It's much the same here, if I'm being honest. All of these other kids. You can pick out the weak links right away, see who's cowering behind who, who avoids your eyes when you look at them.

Who's _afraid_ , really.

Camden's already been waiting outside my room for several minutes by the time they're done with me. I suspect, at this point, that he's only still doing it, letting me take his arm, because he's not used to this amount of attention. I could see it in him the second I met him, since he appeared outside my door during the chariots almost like he did just now.

Besides, Camden exactly what I envisioned in an ally. He's strong, no doubt about that. I knew that even before they awarded him a nine in training. But the more he eats up this attention the tighter my grip on him gets. It's everything I ever wanted.

Well, besides the broken nose. But I don't think anyone accounted for that.

"Where's Shirin?" I ask, tucking my arm through his.

"With Tavian. Don't worry about it. I'm watching him."

I don't trust Camden to keep an eye on him, is all. Why do you think I went to talk to Shirin yesterday, instead of him? If I thought Camden could handle it then I would've let him from the start. I feel like a handler, almost, with too many dogs on too many leashes with all of them struggling to get away from me at the very same time.

Parker stares me right in the eye when we get back-stage, one of the only ones who will. Both of the Nines do, for only a moment until they're looking away as quickly as they can manage.

At this point I don't know if it's me or Camden. He's the brawn, sure, but I was only two points behind him, and it sure as hell wasn't because I beat a bunch of dummies into near non-fluffy existence. Someone here has to be more agile than that, smarter than that.

Shirin is indeed standing with Tavian, closer to the exit doors, but that's not the issue. Nadir and Tanis are there too, and while they're talking calmly with Tavian, Shirin doesn't seem to be involved at all. Nor does it seem he wants to be, though that's not really a surprise. He's above them all, excluding me of course. Tavian's stereotypical, hiding behind his training, the rest of them less than stellar. Our skill sets both stand out from the rest, make us the individuals that really don't belong, and I think Shirin's recognized it.

Where I've embraced it, I think he's almost done it too much.

That's a far, far height to fall from.

"They're going to be an issue," I say, gesturing towards the three of them. Camden follows my gaze and nearly scoffs.

"Shirin will be on our side," he responds. "Those three won't stand a chance if they pull something. Not against us."

A foolish mistake if I've ever heard one. If I really believed that, then I probably wouldn't have wiggled my way into this situation. People don't look at me, knowing nothing, and think that I'm a contender.

For all we know, they're holding back. They could be capable of things we've never even heard of.

Shirin's already proven that once.

That's the issue, with Camden. He thinks he knows it all. He thinks I'm never going to let go of his arm.

If the height Shirin could fall is high, then Camden's is practically interstellar.

I've seen how high some people can make it. Hell, I'm one of the people there, through my birthright and how I raised. But my mother always taught me not to take that for granted, of all things. Arrogance is one thing, the belief that you're indestructible is another. I know how close I am to death right now. No matter what we are, the devils people see us as, we can never truly allow that thought to leave us. Especially not in a situation like that is.

You either embrace that, or you let it destroy you. Angel on one shoulder, devil on the other, sort of thing. We're all indestructible, at some point. And this is a moment that too many people are going to fall.

I don't plan on letting this be mine.

* * *

 **Early Sinnett, 14 years, District Three Female.**

* * *

I really don't think I have a choice.

I didn't want this. Didn't want anything, really. Then I had gone and made the stupid decision to tell Aukai that two people had been arguing about me. That Parker and Rooke had opened their even stupider mouths while I was walking away and had the audacity to be interested.

Now Aukai won't leave me alone about it.

The Twelve guy is the only one that's still alone in some capacity, and that's completely by choice. That had been my choice, too, until the mistake of blurting it out.

The issue is, I see where Aukai's coming from. Something about him not having allies going into it either, until he met some halfway through. Said he wouldn't be here if he hadn't found them when he did. We're not the same people, not even close, but I'm at least smart enough to recognize that half of the people here are clinically insane and the other half at least have an ally or two. Which means no matter who I run into I'm effectively dead.

Not a single person here deserves to die, not that I know of. But if it meant sending me back home right this second I'd murder them all in their sleep.

That seems like the only current way I'm going to get anything accomplished.

Someone taps me on the back of the shoulder. "Hey."

Well, at least it's not Rooke and Parker again.

It's very, very easy to look at Laurel and recall the girl who lost her marbles at the reaping. She seems to have composed herself fairly well since then, at least. Her score not be anything impressive, but mine's not much better. I don't think anyone's going to support our alliance based on scores.

Great. I'm already thinking of it as _our_ alliance.

It's come down to the fact that I don't want to die. That's literally it. Who knows, maybe not a single one of them will be able to save me from that. But it might make someone think twice about trying it in the first place. And who else is going to care at this point about whether or not I get my throat slit open? No one, apparently. Definitely not Shirin. He'll probably be on the other end of the knife.

"Have you decided?" Laurel eventually asks.

" _Decided_?" I respond. "Like you guys ever actually asked me in the first place?"

Laurel stares and doesn't say anything. Judging by how my conversation went with them two days ago, maybe she's learned that staying silent is what's best. Like I said, composed. Serious, if I dare say so. It's not like that's Rooke's role. Someone had to take it, and leaving the thirteen year old as the deciding factor in this alliance probably wasn't their first choice.

"Fine," I sigh. "I don't have any other choice anyway."

Laurel smiles in triumph, and the look on her face says it all. She already knew the answer when she walked over here. My face must've given it all away, the war inside my head about whether or not to trust people I shouldn't trust at all. Rooke and Parker are looking over here now too, and I scowl.

"Don't start getting full of yourselves," I snap, loud enough for half the group to hear me and start searching me out in the crowd. Parker rolls his eyes. Rooke looks excited, but I also don't think Rooke's thinking past two minutes from now, when they're going to start calling us on-stage and everyone in here will no doubt have a meltdown about it. Not me, though. Let some of the others be the idiotic, blithering children. That's not me.

"What's the plan?" I ask the three of them, when Laurel eventually manages to drag me towards them. This will come as a complete surprise to no one, but all of them blink owlishly at me.

Well, not Parker. He's looking at me like he's been trying to work out a plan for days and still has no idea what to say.

"You guys are useless," I inform them, and Laurel looks a little wounded. "Cornucopia? We killing anyone? What's the deal?"

There's the dumb looks again. Laurel, to her credit, probably didn't learn any useful ways to kill someone that don't involve her eventually tripping over her own two feet. Parker could get smacked across the room if someone thought to hit him the right away.

Rooke blinks at me. "No offense, I really didn't want to kill anyone that early."

Like there's ever a better time to start doing it.

"Okay, fine," I force out. "Parker decides where we're going then. No statistics bullshit, just pick a direction and we all listen to it. Rooke, you're going with me. If we have to kill someone, _I'll_ do it. You can be there for moral support or whatever you want to call it. Laurel, you think you can manage to grab something without getting caught?"

"I guess so."

Not really the answer I was hoping for, but I'll take it.

"Weapon, backpack, anything. We're not going in this without anything." There's absolutely no way I'm being stuck with these three with no supplies on top of everything. Just behind us, the Six girl and the Eight guy look amused. Trying and failing not to laugh under their breath. I scowl.

"Most importantly of all, don't do anything you're not supposed to. And don't you dare leave me behind."

I don't think any of them had really considered that at all. They all nod.

Good riddance.

* * *

 **Zion Lancaster, 18 years, District Eleven Male.**

* * *

I watch everybody file out onto the stage, one after one.

Olympia seems to have done fine, and the crowd at least liked her. She looks very endearing, sparkling dress and all, even though I know just how loud she can be. I don't think her confidence has broken in the slightest since her training score. Then again, you could say the very same thing about me. I don't think anybody expected me to score an entire point lower than she did.

Then again, how many people here know how ready I am to just give up on this? Not a single person.

I've been thinking more and more of my family. About how well they're handling this. As always, it's not really me that matters. It's always the people you leave behind in your wake, that have to live with it in the aftermath.

Oeshe's out on stage now, the crowd laughing along with her. She's got two Careers on her side, a solid score to go with it. Of course the audience is eating that up. They seem to admire the lack of a filter that she possesses, the shameless way she carries herself. I wish I could manage a fraction of that, could tell the audience that rooting for me is worth it.

Of everything, I feel bad for Olympia. I hesitated for so long, watching her stomp around angrily, before I finally ended up by her side. I think I made the right choice, but it's becoming more clear by the day that I could end up dragging her down with me.

She doesn't deserve that.

Oeshe's back now, bouncing off the stage, and Olympia gives me an encouraging smile. That's about all I get before they're ushering me onto stage, no other words exchanged.

The crowd's volume is nowhere near the levels it was towards the beginning, but that's not surprising. Nor is it discouraging. Like I said, I've made my own decision. These people, everyone watching, won't change that.

Just like I won't change who I am for this.

Edolie takes my hand and raises it to the crowd. The cheers get a little louder, just enough to be noticeable, and I smile. Olympia doesn't deserve this, I remind myself, doesn't deserve to be allied with someone she's so convinced is going to try. Doesn't deserve to be lied to about it either. The least I can do right now is stand strong while I'm still here and add a little hope to the mix.

The crowd falls into a hush when I take a seat, although Edolie still has a hand on my arm. It's a little distracting, being here. All of the lights and the people and the colors - it's not like anything I've ever seen before.

It's certainly something.

"So, Zion," Edolie begins. "How have you enjoyed yourself in the Capitol thus far?"

"It's certainly something," I repeat out-loud. "Very different from Eleven, but I think you could've guessed that. It's very... overwhelming. Nice, though. Everyone's here been great so far. Including Olympia."

She mentioned me, so I have to do the same. It only feels right. Besides, none of it was a lie. No one here has given me anything to be mad about. In fact, they've been almost too nice, gentle in comparison to what I envisioned. I've heard so many horror stories about what the Capitol was like, and none of them seem to be true right now.

Or maybe that's just my unwillingness to see bad in any one person.

"Right, Olympia. I think I speak for most of us when I say we were surprised, to say the least, that you two were allies. How did that happen?"

"I said the same thing to her, but she reminds me of one of my little sisters. Maren. They're very similar. And Olympia seemed very determined, when I first met her. A lot like my sister. One of the last things she asked me was if I was going to try, really. She's seven years younger than me and already thinking about what I would have to do in the arena." All honest. I don't know how to be anything but, at this point.

"She asked you if you were going to try? Why is that?"

I swallow. I look back over my shoulder, towards the stage's entrance. I can still see Olympia, although she's nearly lost in the shadows.

She deserves to know.

I take a deep breath. "She knows who I am. She knows that it's not in my nature to hurt others. To take, to steal, to kill. All of the things that I would need to do to get back home. She knew looking at me right then that I wouldn't."

Edolie doesn't say anything. I can't see Olympia now; I've turned back to the crowd, but I can picture her face. Her confusion. She thought that we would work together at this, that maybe I could protect her when she couldn't protect herself. I can't do that if I'm unwilling to even save myself, though.

"I accepted my own death the second they called my name," I finish. The crowd is so silent you could hear a pin drop in the middle of the room, and Edolie is staring at me, sadness reflected back at me in her eyes.

The thing is, I believe that sadness, even if some would cast it aside as being fake. My admission has let them realize, let everyone realize, what's really going on here. What's really going on with me.

And I don't have the ability to change it.

* * *

I almost published this without an AN but then it would look ugly but I also have no idea what to say so! I am excited for the peek at the arena next week, and that's about it. Mostly because I love confusing people, myself most of all.

Until next time.


	16. Skyward Bound

Launch.

* * *

 **Jaeden Hillion, 15 years, District Twelve Male.**

* * *

Waking up, I almost forget for a second.

When the realization settles over me, that today's the today, it feels like a stone in the pit of my stomach. I'm going into this alone, but at least I'm going into it dedicated to myself, just the way it should be.

I only manage to lay there for another few minutes before there's a knock on the door, Ashara's voice floating through from the other side.

"We have to be ready to go in a half hour."

That probably means I could lay here for at least another twenty minutes, if I really pushed it. It's not like I'm unfamiliar with the concept of scraping everything you have together last minute and moving on with it. There's already a set of clothes laid across the dresser that someone put out last night, and while I know I should be grateful for the breakfast that is no doubt bigger than any meal I've ever had in my entire life, I can't make myself do it.

I've never been good at small talk. There's not much to talk about with the other kids that live on the streets in Twelve. We're all constantly exhausted or starving or keeping our distance from everyone else for a reason that too many people and not enough people understand at the very same time.

I expected Ashara to wander off, at my lack of response. She's mostly left me to my own devices, recognizing that I'm more than capable enough on my own. This time, though, she cracks the door open and peeks in.

"I'm coming in."

No choice about that, then. It's not like I could refuse her anyway, I'm not doing anything but sitting here in my unmade bed and mulling over all of the possibilities running through my head at this very moment. She glances around the room, picks a pillow up off the floor that must've fallen off sometime in the night. These beds are _too_ uncomfortable, like I'm about to sink right through to the floor beneath. Eventually she sits next to me on the bed and stares at the unlaced shoes sitting by my feet.

"You don't want breakfast?"

I shake my head, and she doesn't force the issue. Besides, if Cade's words are to be believed, they'll feed me something else before launch too. No use stuffing myself when I never have been able to before.

"Do you want me to leave?"

I don't even know how to answer that. I've always been better off alone. But I told her about the Vanserra's two nights ago, even if she's heard of them herself, and she hadn't interrupted me once. Finally, I shake my head.

"I'm not nervous," I say eventually. "Is that weird?"

She shrugs. "I wasn't really either. My mentor thought it was weird then but I've seen it a lot since then. No point in being nervous about something that's out of your control, at the end of the day."

I can just barely hear Nadir and Cade, out in the dining room. I don't know if it's quite out of our control. Nadir certainly doesn't think so, considering the mega alliance that she's a part of. Ashara has always thought I had a chance, she's never been secretive about it. I have to think so too, of course, or what point is there to all of this?

"Thank-you," I say.

"Haven't done anything yet."

"Just ... you've been nice. And I haven't had a lot of that."

I'm just so used to being alone, to pushing other people away because I end up ruining it anyway, that it's nice to have someone care. To have someone that actually believes I'm worth more than what I've been given this far. I know what the audience saw last night; a scrawny, underfed kid from Twelve that wouldn't play along perfectly to their questions. That's what they get almost every year, and they're sick of it.

I'm sick of it too. But I'm not about to start changing when my very being is what could get me through all of this.

Besides, it can't have been all bad. If it was, Ashara wouldn't still be here believing in me.

"Okay, I'm gonna get ready," I decide. Ashara pats me on the shoulder and makes for the door.

"If you reconsider breakfast, it'll be waiting. If not you can meet us at the elevators in... twenty-four minutes now."

Yeah, somewhere that's a little bit ironic.

When she closes the door behind her, I attempt to flip the switch. To embrace the kid living in the alleyways in Twelve, the one that steals and runs and never looks back. It always boils down to me wanting to me a good person, in the fleeting moments between me doing something bad and me realizing that very thing just kept me alive.

I stand up and pick up the clothes, quickly changing into them and shoving my feet into the boots. It still doesn't really feel like all of this is happening. When I woke up, it almost all felt like a dream. That I was safe and warm in bed and I didn't wake up to my stomach rumbling and for the first time in my life I really had something.

It was never going to be true.

Just like me wanting to be better.

Life's got a funny way of working like that. Making you think you can be one thing and quickly proving that you've always been another.

Some people hate it. I do too, somewhere deep down inside me.

But right now I can't afford to.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

The hovercraft is imposing to look at.

It's worse being inside.

At least I still have Houston with me. They could have separated us but by some miracle we're sitting together. He was even nice enough to let me reach across the gap between our seats and cling to his arm with my free hand while they inserted the tracker in my forearm. I stare at the little bump hidden underneath my skin, running my fingers over it.

The Three guy is across the way, watching me do it. The Six guy, just next door, is staring at _him_.

No one knows what to look at.

The ride's not terribly long, or maybe that's just my racing heart pushing everything closer and closer together. I tip my head back against the seat and stare at the ceiling while the hovercraft lands, and then close my eyes. It's still not happening. I'm still here. Houston's hand is still in mine, even though the minutes until that too ends are getting smaller and smaller by the second.

The thought really hasn't worried me until now, how far apart we could be. Either way we're running, but I'd really prefer if my life wasn't made more difficult by the fact of him being entirely blocked by the Cornucopia.

We're the last ones out of the hovercraft. I can see how nervous the majority of everyone else is, but that probably only means they can see how nervous _I_ am too. It's not even like there's anywhere to run to, not like it would matter. You think my legs have a chance at outrunning a mob of Peacekeepers? Probably not.

"See you soon," I say to Houston, even managing a smile. He leans forward and hugs me, briefly, and I cling to him as tight as I can in those few seconds. For all we know, this is it.

I don't want this to be it.

I won't say that out-loud, though. No need to make right now even worse than it already is by being a downer about it.

He lets go without a word, but he squeezes my arm like I did with his on the hovercraft and lets the Peacekeeper lead him away. My own Peacekeeper doesn't bother moving me along until Houston is far, far out of sight, disappearing around the corner. It feels like something momentous, finally being on my own. I haven't been properly alone since the reapings, when we started all of this. Sure, I've got a Peacekeeper to lead me around, but he doesn't care about me or what could happen a few hours from now.

To him, I don't even really have a name.

Cyprian's waiting on the other side of the door as the Peacekeeper ushers me inside. He's been kind thus far, if not a little loud, but I don't think bringing that up is going to make it better. Besides, it's not like the prep team was any better in that department. All I know is they've treated me almost like a friend, for lack of a better word. He wraps his arms around my shoulders the second I'm in the room, like we really are old friends, and it feels nice.

It's nothing like home, really. Nothing like how Ada and Eliza acted at the goodbyes, still teary-eyed and nearing panic because they didn't know what else to feel. Cyprian and the prep team never really seemed concerned about my chances of survival, because that's not their job.

"Here, sit, sit," he says, ushering me to the couch. "No need to get ready yet. Anything to eat? Or a drink?"

I think if I ate anything right now it would end badly for both of us, but whatever drink he pushes into my hands seems to settle whatever's going on in my stomach, and I'm not about to ask what it is.

"No need to worry, sweetheart," he says. Judging by the look on his face he must think that's reassuring. "You'll get through this, the two of you. You've got something a lot of the others are missing - undeniably loyalty to each other. That's worth a lot more than you think."

And what will if I do, if it comes to a situation where only one of us is going to be alive at the end of it? By some sort of fluke I got a higher score than Houston did, but in what world is that going to help me when it comes to anything involving him? It's not. I think, in some sort of alternate universe, had we been the exact same age, we would've been friends in the real world. Not forced together like this.

"You'll be rooting for me?" I ask, because I've been wondering. It's too easy to wonder about things like that, if they wish I had been someone else. Someone older, stronger, more prepared.

The almost Career movement in Ten died out years ago, now. They're never going to get anything like that again.

"There's no one else I'd rather root for," he says honestly. "You saw the audience last night. They love the two of you. Love _you_. Right now you don't need anything else."

It's like I said. Wondering about the Games isn't really his job. Isn't any of their jobs. They think I have everything I need, that I just need to stay clinging to the outside world and that will be enough.

Someone else's love isn't going to get me through this. Not the Capitol's, or my family and friends.

Not even Houston.

If I want to get through this, it's going to be up to me.

* * *

 **Tavian Muric, 16 years, District One Male.**

* * *

The second I see the outfit I know we're in for something interesting.

Judging by the look on Verity's face, she's more than used to it. I wonder how many years she's done this, helped her tributes get dressed, saw the wonder on their faces. I know I'm much the same right now.

There was an optimistic part of me just hoping it was normal. That would be the ideal situation. But things surpassed normal years ago.

From a distance it just looks like a pile of rags and things people meant to throw out but forgot about, left to sit in the corner for however many years. The only practical thing about it are the boots, which are also the only intact part. Some of it hangs off my shoulders and thigh, the fabric draped over me, and some of it clings to me. The pants and shirt, layered with other random strips of fabric, have randomly placed holes and tears, like something already got a hold of it.

That's not very reassuring.

Verity tugs the worn gray hood over my head and smiles at my expression, no doubt. I wouldn't be surprised if I looked concerned.

"No hints," she chastises, like she even has any idea either. So yeah, I definitely look concerned, which is weird for me.

I haven't been concerned, not really, until right now.

She ushers me into the tube and I take a deep breath, adjusting the hood. Fingerless gloves and everything. Well, at least I'm mostly covered up.

Verity gives me a thumbs up, looking almost amused. She has to have been doing this for a while, to be that calm about all of this. I wish I had asked her. The tube slides shut before I can even open my mouth, and whatever she was about to say is lost in the glass between us, never to be heard.

The tube starts rising seconds later.

I'll have to remember to ask her, if I make it back from this.

I expect to be blinded by the sun when I'm rising, when the plate finally locks into place. I expect to see anything at all that will give me an idea about what I'm running headlong into. When I finally stop moving it's the wind that catches my attention, buffeting so hard against me that I'm sure I'm not the only one that nearly falls over and earns myself a premature death for it.

My eyes are watering so bad I can hardly see, the wind and sand doing their best to blind me permanently, but I blink frantically and look around.

"What the shit," someone says, loud enough to be heard over the wind, just as I see it. Or rather, don't see it.

There's no Cornucopia.

I can feel my pulse all through my neck, in my fingertips. We're all in a circle, that's normal. The ground at our feet is dry and cracked, like a desert, stretching out in every direction as far as the eye can see. All the way to the horizon. But it still gets weirder. There's three buildings, skyscrapers really, towering so far into the sky you can hardly see the tops of them, situated in a perfect triangle around us. There's one behind me, a little to the left, colored in stark black. The other two, which seem to be right behind most of my allies across the circle, are the palest white and a dark maroon.

What the _hell_ is this supposed to be?

There's no Cornucopia, but there's still the timer, hovering in the air between us all. Blair's on my left, the Three girl on my right, who is the one apparently swearing up a storm. The sky is gray and dark and imposing, the air almost sickly and pale, and it's when I'm looking up at it trying to figure out what's going on I see it.

The timer hits thirty seconds. The wind stops all at once.

Everything, all of a sudden, is deathly silent. I can _hear_ my own heartbeat now, practically in my throat. I'm still looking upwards, but now that the wind's not making it so difficult it's even easier to see what I was so convinced I was imagining before.

Found the Cornucopia.

There's three bridges extending from all the buildings, about halfway up. God, they're tall. A hundred stories at least. I can see right through them - they're all glass, mimicking the sky above them, and where the three of them connect in a wide platform in the middle I can see the bottom of the Cornucopia. It's not golden but you'd have to be blind not to see the twisting horn through the glass bottom.

The Three girl is still swearing.

One by one, I see everyone look up. The realization hits some people faster than others. There's nothing down here, nothing useful. Everything we need is fifty stories up in the sky and there's only three ways up.

That's when everyone panics.

Someone a few down from me starts yelling instructions that I don't even have time to make sense of. Camden is still staring up into the sky. I chance a look behind me. The skyscraper behind me isn't that far off, but there's also going to another rough eight people that decide to go for the same one that I do, and I'm nowhere near the closest to it.

Out of nowhere, Isi starts _laughing_.

Half the circle stares at her, probably wondering at which point she lost all of her sanity. She was staring up like so many of the others but now she looks around the circle, grinning.

"Twenty on Camden!"

God, we are not betting on this right now. Are we seriously betting on this right now?

Beside me, Blair doesn't look too impressed at her words. He shares a glance with Anya, who's four to my right. She nods at him.

I don't panic, not ever, but right now I might come close. What the hell is going on? And how many times have I wondered that, since my plate locked into place?

The timer is loud. Too loud. We're down to fifteen. Everyone seems to realize that they don't have much time left. Not enough to make a game plan for this. Everyone prepared for the normal. And like I said, we left that behind too long ago. We should have been preparing for anything but that. Everyone's twisting around frantically, trying to catch a glimpse of their allies, or maybe looking for safety. There's nothing on the horizon though. Nothing that's going to save them and nothing that's going to change what's in front of them.

Ten seconds left, now.

That's when the acid rain hits.

* * *

Back at it again with the terrible ass starting positions and arenas that (almost) don't make any sense. Glad I'm sticking with tradition, because that's apparently the only thing I'm good at.

I still am updating next week with the bloodbath despite being four hours by plane away from my laptop, but it may not necessary be around the same time (I'm usually on it at about 12pm EST). It'll be at some point on Saturday, so don't get concerned if it gets late and nothing's happened. Promise! And a last reminder before we get to the murder - everything in this story is based off of what I think would work best. It's not based off of reviews or how well I know you or anything else of the sort, so if your character ends up dead earlier than you were expecting, remind yourself that this is a story where I was guaranteed to kill 23 of them off from the get-go. It's nothing personal to you, or even your character.

Until next time. And don't scroll down, you pricks.


	17. War

Bloodbath.

* * *

 _You run, like the letters on these pages.  
I'm not sick but still so far away from sane.  
Nightmares, but I haven't slept in ages.  
The battle's won but there's still poison in our veins._

 _Save me, I think I'm losing my mind.  
You said you'd come for me when the world swallowed me whole.  
Well, this is war._

 _Let the darkness come for me, let it try to steal my soul._

 _As if I had a soul to steal._

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

The Nine girl screams.

It must hit her first. A few drops splatter across the ground in front of me and then one lands smack dab in the middle of my hand, the skin burning instantly. Everyone starts yelling at approximately the same time.

Well, not everyone.

Rory's right next to me, staring, as I pull my hands as far as I can into my gloves. My face is pretty well-covered, but the rain is hard and in minutes my clothes are going to be soaked through. My hand doesn't seem to be blistering or bubbling like you'd so expect, but it _hurts_ , and that's enough. He's still staring at me in concern, and as I turn back to him, he holds his hand out above the platform. I watch the rain hit it, watch it splash all over his hand, and nothing happens.

Celia's across the circle, staring at me too. And nothing's happening to her either.

This is _bullshit_.

I nod at her. Plan's still in action, no matter how fucked up this all is, and she's still the fastest. Besides, one of the towers is right behind her. Oeshe and I are going to have to move more for that. She seems to be suffering from the same thing I am, shoving her hands underneath her shirt to protect them, but when she looks at me through the rain I know we're still on the same page.

None of us were kidding when we said we needed to get this started as soon as possible.

Five seconds. On my left the Eight girl looks at me, completely unharmed.

When the countdown hits three, Camden jumps.

I wasn't really in the mindset to be paying attention to him. Something flickers out of the corner of my eye and when I turn away from Oeshe, back to Camden's side, he's already in the air.

He hits the ground, feet splashing in the already forming puddles, a second after the gong sounds. By the time any of us move he's already halfway to the red tower.

In two seconds flat Blair's tearing after him.

Celia turns off the back of her platform and takes off for the palest tower before I've even managed to make sense of where everyone else is going. Rory's already gone, but him and Anya were across the circle from each other and I can't catch sight of her no matter where I look. They must've gone up different ways. The Eight girl's gone too, tearing across the circle, but I have no idea where her ally is.

There's still people screaming, but not all. It's still not effecting everyone.

Fuck it.

I leap off the platform and take off after Oeshe.

It's not like she did end up getting a shitty score. It was fine. Better than fine, to most people. But that doesn't mean we ever left the mindset to grab the first person we see and end them behind. By the time I've figured out where the hell she even is amidst the rain and the chaos, half the group is already gone, hiding against the other side of the buildings or already in them.

She's got two options, and the Twelve kid is already outpacing her by a mile, booking it in the opposite direction.

She crashes into Tavian instead.

I watch, still running, as the two of them go down in a heap not far from the platform he was on, writhing and kicking. That was decidedly _not_ what I meant at all when I said to grab someone. In fact, that was probably the exact opposite of what I meant. No matter what I said I never wished him any ill will at the end of the day. And now I don't have a fucking choice, or she's going to die. There's not a doubt in my mind that he'll get the upper hand, and he'll get it fast.

He's managed to get on top of her, but it's not like there's anything to kill her with. His hands are wrapped around her throat but I can see them turning red where the rain's hitting them, the same way it's hitting Oeshe's face now that she's looking upwards.

It's not ugly. Not yet.

I don't even stop running. I use the momentum to kick him as hard as I can off of her.

My boot connects somewhere between his neck and shoulder and he goes rolling off of her, gasping. Oeshe rolls with him and grabs one of his legs just as he attempts to struggle to his feet.

He knows he's outnumbered. He also knows that neither of us planned on ever having any mercy on each other, not really.

I grab his jacket and drag him the last few inches back to his plate, and then crack his head against the side of it.

He nearly falls out of my hands, he goes so limp. He's still clinging to consciousness, but just barely. There's a gash opened up on his temple, blood dripping off onto the edge of the plate as I slam his head back into it again. Oeshe is still clinging to his legs, the last precautionary measure we really have, but I can hear her gasping in pain the harder the rain hits the ground. Tavian's not making any sound now, not after the third time, and I press a knee into his chest and wrap both of my hands around his neck, the same way he did to her.

"Go!" I tell her. "Go after Celia, it's fine!"

She apparently doesn't need to be told twice. She knows it's only a matter of time. Oeshe struggles to her feet and starts running, halfheartedly, towards the tower Celia went into.

Blood aside, this is going to take a minute. She already got the worst of the rain. My hands are burning too, but the pain's not overwhelming. Not yet, anyway.

I close my eyes against the rain, because I don't really want to see this either. He's already unconscious but that still doesn't make the fact that I'm killing my District partner a few minutes in any easier, really, not when I trained alongside him for years.

We weren't friends, that's what I remind myself of.

I feel his pulse slow off under my hand then stop entirely, my knuckles white against the pressure. I still hold on for a few seconds, just to make sure. His blood is already running off into the dirt, mixing with the rainwater next to me. My hands are starting to burn with a pain I can't ignore and there's no question in my mind that it's going to get worse.

I'm in the middle of standing up over his lifeless body when something hits the ground behind me.

Not something.

Someone.

* * *

 **Anya Preising, 15 years, District Two Female.**

* * *

Allies or not, Blair and I made a deal.

I've accepted that I'm probably not going to beat Camden up there. Blair isn't either, apparently, considering how far Camden jumped, but he's right behind him and although I went a different direction I know I can't be far behind them at this pace.

When I slam open the door to the tower I don't even know what to think. There's nothing at all, really. It's cold in here, but it's like that everywhere. Everything seems very barren - empty shelves, all the furniture old and musty. Cobwebs are clinging to the corners of the room and I see a few rats skuttle away down the hallway as I go thundering past their hiding spots.

I have no idea where Rory is, or which way he went up. But that's not my priority.

I find the door to the stairwell and start running.

There's no telling how far up it is. Halfway is about the only estimation we're gonna get, but I'm not going to worry about that until I've made it a decent ways up there. Fifty stories, roughly, between me and whatever's up there.

I finally slow long enough to check the number next to one of the exit doors. Fourteen. And it already feels like I've been going forever. No time to reflect on that now, though. I can hear footsteps echoing through the stairwell below me. That's to be expected. There's only three ways to go, really. Not everyone's going to hide. Right now there's no telling who's going to be up there besides the three of us.

It can't have been more than a few minutes, when I hit the forties. I slam out of the exit door on forty-eight and sprint down the hallway, elbowing open the first door I see and crossing over to the window. Not at the bridge, not yet, but if I tilt my head I can just make out how far it is.

Exactly fifty. I knew it.

By the time I get back to the stairwell and continue on I can see the Eleven guy, maybe three or four floors below me. He peers up at me through the gaps in the railings, still moving, as I start ascending the steps of the last two floors.

There's no grand door on fifty, nothing hiding the bridge from view. When I emerge from the stairwell I can see it, plain as day, jutting out from the end of the hallway like an every day, normal doorway.

And sure enough, Camden's already there.

Blair's already halfway down the bridge towards him. Maybe Camden didn't notice how closely he was being followed, or maybe he did. I nearly go crashing into the edge of the bridge as I run out of the building and onto it, the glass slippery beneath my feet. I can see straight down to the ground below me, the height dizzying as I stare directly down. The rain is still coming down in sheets but whatever it was doing to Dimara, whatever it's doing to Camden right now, it's not harming me.

Camden grabs one of the backpacks as I catch myself against the glass edge of the bridge. There's no weapons lining the wall, nothing lying in the mouth of the Cornucopia except seven backpacks, one dangling out of his hand. I see him rip it open, see his hands frantically digging through it, but he emerges with nothing.

There's no weapons.

He shoulders the backpack and rises from his crouch, noticing me for the first time. So he won't go this way. There's the option of the third bridge, but that's around the other side of the Cornucopia.

And like I said. Blair's already there.

Camden darts for it anyway, just as I hear the stairwell door open far behind me again, the Eleven guy stumbling out of it.

There's no point on focusing on him, though.

I dart forward. Camden practically slides around the far side of the Cornucopia, headed directly for the last empty bridge, and comes face to face with Blair.

"What's up, dickhead?" Blair says, smiling despite how eerily calm he says it.

I hardly even see it happen. Blair kicks at Camden's legs, just once, and he stumbles. The barest amount, but that's all it takes.

Blair wraps one hand in his jacket, the other around his collar and flings him towards the edge of the bridge.

It's one of those things that would happen in slow motion, if you were watching it back. Getting flung around was not something I thought I would ever apply to Camden Kershaw, and yet I watch anyway as his back hits the glass wall at the edge of the bridge and he goes crashing right through it.

Glass splinters all across the bridge as he goes through and over it, careening away into the empty space under it. Blair doesn't even move, just stares straight down through the gap between his feet as Camden goes spiraling towards the ground, fifty stories below. I grab the railing and look over, but by the time I've looked he's already hit the ground, body twisted unnaturally, in a pool of his own blood.

The Eleven guy is still standing a ways behind me, mouth agape, torn between staring at the crater sized hole in the side of the bridge and down towards where Camden landed. I keep my hands locked around the railing. To be honest, it's kind of hard to look away.

Holy _shit_.

Camden's alliance, or at least the majority of it, is what snaps me out of it. Isi, Shirin and Tanis are on the third bridge. Shirin puts it together instantly and I see the other two follow closely behind, Tanis peering over the edge of the bridge

Yeah, those are some murderous looks if I've ever seen them.

"Hey!" Blair calls, and I turn in time to catch the backpack he throws at me, holding it tight against my chest. He waves, a little cheekily, at the three of them, and then takes back off the way he came with his own backpack, disappearing back into the darkness of the building.

One by one, they all turn to look at me. I shoulder the backpack and head back for my own door.

The Eleven guy goes out of his way to give me extra room to leave, but I have no interest in taking on someone else twice my size right now.

Right now, I just need to find Rory.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

"I'm gonna have a heart attack," Casper complains.

It does kind of feel like my lungs are going to burst out of my chest, and I'm a pretty fast runner, so I can only imagine what Casper's feeling right about now. We're nowhere near the front of the pack, mostly because unlike everyone else, we actually made sure we were all together before we took off. I don't think I saw one fully intact alliance run away from our starting position.

The Two girl comes slamming into the stairwell just as we reach the fiftieth floor, a backpack hooked over her shoulders. She pays us no mind as she practically shoves Farren and I out of the way and goes running back down the stairs past us.

I think all of us, for once, actually notice the lack of any sort of weapon in her hands at the same time.

Farren catches the door she opened and ushers us both through. Zion's already standing at the edge of the bridge, but doesn't appear to actually be doing anything other than staring and wondering what the hell he should be doing.

"Where's Olympia?" I ask, as we come up behind him. He jumps nearly a mile and whirls around.

"No idea."

"Nice," Casper deadpans. Yeah, that's about how I feel. There's no way she would've been able to keep up with him all the way to the fiftieth floor, and that's if they even went up the same way. Like I said. Not a single thing besides us left the plates intact.

"Camden went off," Zion says, a little distantly, like he's trying to work his head around something.

"Camden went what— oh my god," Farren breathes, peering around him to see towards the ground. I lean around her too and stare out the bottom of the glass, not really making sense of the pinprick-sized body on the ground several hundred feet below us. That's enough to confirm all of our suspicions, really. Whoever got to him in the end would've just killed him outright if they had the option to.

There are no weapons in the Cornucopia, and I notice Isi pick up a shard of glass half the length of her forearm from the broken part of the bridge at the same time.

"Okay, truce for five seconds," I announce. Not like I was planning on killing Zion anyway. "One for each of us."

Casper's in the middle of muttering something about the amount of backpacks when I take off.

Someone shouts after me, and someone else immediately follows, but there's no point in looking to see who. We've got an opportunity here, stupid as it may seem. Isi still hasn't even noticed me. Probably wouldn't have until I was nearly at the Cornucopia, if Tanis wouldn't have shouted to announce my arrival when I was halfway there. Isi looks up.

Definitely not good.

The only reassurance I have right now is that whoever's behind me is probably going to help, while I think Isi might be on her own. Tanis is still further down and no offense to Shirin, he really doesn't look like he's got any interest in fighting us.

My fingers close around the strap of a backpack and I fling it somewhere in the vicinity of behind me, hoping to god that someone actually has the frame of mind to catch it.

Unfortunately for me, that's about the time Isi gets there, still brandishing that chunk of glass like she's going to have zero problem improvising with it.

Great.

I notice a lot of things, right when I grab the second backpack and sling it back again. Farren's just behind me, and she's got the first backpack. Zion catches the second one, turns around, and takes back off the way we came, all protective instincts apparently having fallen off the bridge when Camden did. And Casper had a point, we probably should get more than just one, but I don't think we're going to have time.

There's faces in the windows a few floors down, too. The Nines? The Four girl is just behind the bridge Shirin and Tanis are still standing on, but they're not going to see her unless they're really looking. There really is too much going on for me to really be concerned about it anyway.

I can reach a third backpack. But there's no way we're keeping it.

I grab the strap and fling it as hard as I can towards Isi's face.

It smacks her pretty dead on. She manages to keep a hold of the glass but has to dedicate most of her time to not stumbling right back through the hole Camden made in the bridge from the force of it. Farren grabs my arm while I'm too busy wondering if I should be happy or not that she didn't end up falling, and then we're running.

Farren doesn't ever really let go of my arm, though I suspect that's because I made her follow me out there in the first place and she doesn't want me running off again.

"You're an idiot," she manages. We're in a different tower now, but that doesn't really matter. Ahead of us, Casper snorts.

I could care less about where we are right now, or how close that could've come in another world.

We survived, and that's all I need right now.

* * *

 **Early Sinnett, 14 years, District Three Female.**

* * *

One thing.

I asked them not to do one thing, and they still managed to do it.

Where the hell are my allies?

It took all of two seconds for it to happen. Laurel and Rooke were close enough together and even closer to a tower that they apparently forgot to care about me. Parker wasn't far from them either. The three of them were at one of the towers before I had even managed to get through the middle without getting knocked over, and by then there were other people following them in.

Can you blame me for going a different way?

To make matters worse, I overshot the bridge.

I'm standing two floors above it, wondering what the hell chance I have of getting back down and getting a backpack unscathed. The Sixes and the Eight guy disappear off into the white tower a minute after the Eleven guy ran back into the one I'm currently in.

I don't have a choice do I?

It gets worse, though. The two floors I have to take back down seem to change everything. The door on the fiftieth floor hasn't even closed properly from so many people stumbling through it, and by the time I do the same I finally catch sight of my stupid, lost allies.

All three of them are completely across the way, and don't seem to have any interest in noticing me standing here. I chance waving my arms frantically before a moment, really hoping Shirin doesn't decide to turn around and notice, but nothing happens. There's three of them, sure, but somehow I don't think Rooke, Laurel and Parker are going to be anywhere near as successful as the first trio that managed to escape Isi.

The Eleven girl gets there, just behind Celia, when Laurel attempts to make her move.

Of course. Because I told her she needed to grab something for us. That would be the thing she listened to, and not the part about _leaving me behind_.

And, of course, everyone moves at the same time.

Celia and Eleven both take off for the Cornucopia, because Shirin seems to be mostly distracted by my allies gunning for it, and they run right around him to do it. Isi's brandishing something, alright, but she's got _five_ different people to aim for and Seven is just now picking up what is definitely a shard of glass from the side of the bridge.

Celia ducks around Isi like she does it in her sleep and Eleven follows without much more effort, even if it's a little less graceful.

It appears, apparently, that Isi is the least of my allies problems.

Laurel's already attempting to shoulder a backpack, and while Parker looks like he wants to go for a second one I already know that's not going to be successful. Seven is blocking the mouth of the Cornucopia now. There's only one backpack in visible reach for Celia and it's currently hanging off of the arm of one of my allies.

There's no way this situation ends nicely.

Rooke manages to slide out of the way, slippery as the bridge is, but Laurel isn't so fortunate. Celia grabs her with both arms and tackles her. The backpack goes flying a solid five feet away and Eleven scoops it up before Rooke can even move an inch in it's direction. I can see how wide his eyes are just from here. Parker's backed up now too, even as Laurel and Celia remain tangled up on the ground. Celia rolls over, and her back crunches across the broken glass lying all along the bridge, and I see her hand fumbling for it before anybody else does.

The glass shard is hardly visible, poking out between her fingers.

The blood that spews out of Laurel's neck is the exact opposite.

Someone yells, has to be Rooke, and he grabs Parker's arm and _takes off_. I watch in disbelief as the two of them go running off, as Celia buries the glass shard in Laurel's neck up to the last quarter of an inch. Eleven's got the backpack safely on her, now, and she grabs both of Celia's arms and drags her out from under Laurel's body.

That's what that is. Because Laurel's dead.

I'm still standing there when Eleven hauls Celia to her feet. They look torn, between going after my allies or looking straight at _me._

Yeah, this isn't happening. I turn around.

I'm not even back to the fifty-second floor when I hear footsteps. When I round the corner I nearly collide straight with the Eleven guy, who backs up and holds out his hands, eyes wide.

Below us, the door opens. I see Celia look up the gap between the stairs, directly at us.

There's a very awkward, tense moment where none of us move. There's blood all over Celia's hands from where she just sliced Laurel's jugular into two very distinct pieces, and I see both of the Eleven's look at each other.

"Let's go," the guy says, very quietly, and right now I'm really not in a position to argue. It's take my chances and head back down, hoping Celia didn't happen to pick up an extra shard of glass to slice me open with, or going with him and hoping he's not too keen on killing me any time soon. Judging by the past few days, I don't think he's going to.

And my allies may have been stupid, but I'm not.

I nod, and he grabs my arm and starts hauling me up the stairs.

It's not until right then, when he's practically pulling me along behind him, that I realize how fast my heart is beating.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

I don't even know how I'm supposed to feel right about now.

I'm on a balcony four floors up from the bridge, just watching. The Nine girl's blood is still spreading all over the glass, dripping over the edge to the ground below. The rain's hitting me hard, but still nothing seems to be happening. Besides, it's good camouflage. From here I can watch and no one really seems inclined to look up and notice me. Besides, what would they do? It's not like they've got anything long-ranged to hit me with.

Whatever this building is, I'm not a fan of it. The air doesn't even smell right, like something about the walls is tainted. There was a hospital bed shoved up against the door to this room when I pushed my way in, masks and quarantine tape lying discarded on the floor and fluttering in the breeze.

I feel like I can't look forward for more than two seconds without having to check over my shoulder.

Not a great feeling.

I can still feel my blood thrumming, just a little bit, from throwing Camden over the bridge. From seeing the look on his face. He thought he'd be fast enough to avoid the both of us, to at least be able to hold strong until someone else could intervene.

Even when I grabbed him I don't think it clicked.

I wonder when it did. When his back slammed into the glass wall or when he was three feet from the ground, when he realized he wouldn't survive a fall from that high up.

I don't know if anything else is going to happen. I've seen a few people running around that don't seem to be interested in chancing their luck on the Cornucopia, but not much else. Celia and Oeshe took off a few minutes ago in the opposite direction, the same way Anya did. I haven't seen Rory yet, but I don't see him pushing his luck with Isi this early.

And right below me is Dimara.

I've almost decided to go back inside and start moving when she slides out onto the far end of the bridge. She's the only one there, left to face the three of them. Who knows how far Celia and Oeshe could've gotten by now. It's not like they really had a choice about running for it.

I can see the hesitation in her, even from a few floors up. There are only two backpacks left though, and I sooner see Isi dying rather than letting anyone get one of them. They're already one short. She's not about to let the situation get any worse. Besides, everyone's noticed Dimara's there now. Three on one doesn't look like great odds. Isi takes one of the backpacks and throws the other one to Shirin.

Definitely not great odds.

"Dimara!" I shout, leaning over the edge of the balcony. She whirls and looks up. Everyone does. If the scowl on Isi's face is anything to go by, she'd probably throw a rock at me if she had one on hand.

I point at the backpack I have with one hand. She stares up at me, eyes narrowed.

There's that hesitation, again. But everything's fallen apart so badly, by this point.

"Come on!" I offer. We're not that far apart anyway. I didn't think the Careers were going to be a thing, not properly anyway, but it's different when it was just me alone. Everyone else seemed to have it figured out, and that was fine. Right now it looks like most of that's been destroyed. Who knows if Anya and Rory found each other. Who knows if Dimara has any hope of doing the same.

Finally, she squints upward, shielding her eyes, and gives me a thumbs up.

That's probably the best symbol of her agreeing to this that I'm going to get.

Isi looks like she's going to give chase, but Shirin grabs her arm before she can move. I wait until I'm sure that he's not going to let her go to head back into the building, jogging towards the stairwell. Dimara's already a floor up by the time I get there.

"You look like shit," I inform her, helpful as ever. She jogs the rest of the way up the stairs to me, panting, and then drives her shoulder into my chest, sending me stumbling back a few paces on the landing.

"Shut up. Have I ever mentioned that I hate the rain?"

"No time like the present."

"Good. I hate the fucking rain. Please tell me there's something useful in that backpack."

I shrug. It's not like I've had time to check yet. I was too busy pitching Camden off the edge of the bridge and making sure I didn't accidentally go over myself. Dimara stares at me for a moment, eyes narrowed.

"God, I knew it was you," she says, and continues walking up the stairs. "You're not even subtle."

"I didn't do anything!" It really is that obvious, huh? Not that I should be surprised. Who else would even bother going after him?

"He literally hit the ground ten feet away from me. Not subtle."

"Why were you even still down there?"

"Tavian's dead too," she informs me, and I stop on the next landing in shock, my feet stuttering to a halt. She doesn't break pace for a second, and I stare at her retreating back. Is she serious? Judging by the silence, and her completely blank face, she definitely is.

"That's fucked up!" I call after her, and she untangles her hands away from her chest long enough to give me the finger.

"Says you!" Dimara fires back, and yeah.

That's fair.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

This is a new level of messy.

To think I didn't ever consider this alliance getting messier than it already was.

Now Camden's laying hundreds of feet below us with every bone in his body probably broken, and Tavian and Nadir are both nowhere to be found.

I don't think the lack of anything to solve Isi's bloodlust problems is helping matters much either. I think the only thing stopping her from turning around and attempting it on me, now that Dimara's gone, is Shirin's hand on her arm.

I stand there, about ten feet away, for a very long time. She gave the other backpack to him and there's nothing else here. I wrap my fingers as tight as I can possibly can without breaking skin around the glass shard in my hand, hoping that she doesn't turn around and try it. I don't think Shirin's intentions are to stop her from doing anything nasty. I just don't think he wants anything else to clean up.

No one else shows up, not that I expected anyone to. The only face I've seen since Dimara left was that of the Twelve boy, about seven stories down. All he had done was peek out, just for a second, but with nothing else to focus on I saw him immediately.

Eventually I duck entirely underneath the Cornucopia's overhang. No need to make the burn any worse. The Nine girl's skin is starting to blister from lying there so long, exposed and open to the sky.

Shirin eventually lets go of Isi's arm, slowly. She stalks over and joins me underneath the overhang, dropping the backpack a little harshly by her feet.

"What the fuck do we do now?" she mutters angrily, swinging her head around like something in the universe is going to tell her.

I keep my mouth firmly shut.

As if on cue, three cannons ring out. That definitely doesn't help. Only three? Judging by the faces of the other two, they're not all that impressed by the number either. I know Camden's one of them, Nine the other. But who's the third?

Something else flickers out of the corner of my eye. I lean out of the Cornucopia, still mostly shielded, and catch sight of Nadir. She's standing at the end of one of the bridges, the red tower at her back.

"Hey!" I call out, but she doesn't move. Clearly she's seen us. She leans out of the building just long enough to look towards the ground, towards Camden.

Isi readjusts her grip on the glass, and I swallow, trying not to look down towards it. To think I'm more concerned about that than the girl's corpse lying five feet away. I don't think I could be less concerned about that right now. I can already see it written on Nadir's face, and the stupid part of me doesn't want to let it be true.

 _Tavian?_ I mouth, and after a moment she shakes her head.

Could this get any more terrible?

Isi and Shirin, evidently, don't seem to care. Not that I expected them to. At the end of the day even Camden probably wouldn't have cared about Tavian, if he was still standing here next to me. It's terrible on so many levels. Tavian wasn't just our best shot at eventually beating them, but he was the first person that tried to help. The first person that threw himself into it without thinking, and he was on my side when he did it.

Nadir takes a deep breath. _I'm sorry_ , she mouths, and then she disappears.

"You're fucking kidding me," Isi snarls, and Shirin grabs her arm again, bringing her to a swinging halt. "That fucking _bitch_."

The thing is, I can't blame her for it. I told Nadir that the first day I met her that coming this way was a bad idea, that I didn't know how long we could run from Camden. It seems, with Camden gone, that she's taken her chance at it, and mine's already gone.

Just like me, Nadir only ever wanted to protect herself, and use this alliance to do it.

She's on her own, now.

And so am I.

* * *

Big bloodbaths are over-rated.

Anyway, how much you wanna bet someone still scrolled down after I said not to? Jokes on you.

I'll (vaguely) say this again, but another reminder that anyone who died here only died because that was how I wanted the story to go, and that it's not personal! There always seems to be at least one person angry at me a year for doing it, no matter what I say, but if you want actual justification, feel free to PM me. Blog will be updated every week with what's going on, but if you're still confused, you can also shoot me a message, even though my explanations are terrible.

Future predictions? Thoughts? Angry ramblings? Give 'em to me. Screw late updates, I just got up early to do this.

Until next time.


	18. Unchangeable

Arena, Day One.

* * *

 **Houston Harrels, 12 years, District Ten Male.**

* * *

We've hardly moved.

We knew from the get-go that getting involved in the thick of things would only end badly for us. Besides, Kelsea and I had practically been right next to each other, right in front of the white tower. She had grabbed my arm, still just a little bit faster, and dragged me into it before most of the others had even figured out what their plan of action was.

We stayed on the very first floor, ground level, hidden in a storage closet just down the hallway from the entrance. We haven't heard anything for a long time, so for now it looks like it was an alright move for the two of us.

There was nothing down here for anyone.

Finally, I edge open the door. The rain grows louder, drowning out anything else that we'd be able to hear anyway. Kelsea wraps her outfit a little tighter around herself as we're buffeted by the rain's chilly air, blowing freely down the open hallway. Looks like someone forgot to close the door.

"Let's go," I urge, and we both step out into the hallway at the same time.

She's got her eyes down towards one end and mine the other, but just like we suspected, there's no one here. It feels like someone is, like there are eyes on us from every direction. Maybe that's just the cameras.

Maybe not.

"Hey," Kelsea whispers, a little frantically. She smacks my arm until I turn away from her, looking towards the open door.

There _is_ someone out there. Issue is they're not exactly alive.

Together we creep towards the door. There's rain splashing and pooling all over the entryway. There's not just one body out there, but two. Kelsea and I ran so fast we didn't see any of that happen. One of them's lying twisted and limp at the base of one of the plates to our right but the other, the one that we initially saw, is right in the middle of the circle.

"Think that's Camden," Kelsea says, and kudos to her if she's actually certain about that, because there's not much recognizable about whoever it is. Judging by the glass all over the muddy ground, he probably had quite the fall.

"He's got a backpack," she continues, and we both look at each other. "Maybe we should—"

I understand her hesitance. Our not-so grand plans didn't exactly involve robbing any corpses this early on, but there's no one around and from what little we've seen of this arena, there's not much in the way of supplies. This quite literally just landed in front of us, and we should probably take advantage of it. It's not like the sponsors are going to be falling over each other to give us something.

"I can go," I tell her. "You can—"

"No, I'll come too, it's fine," she says instantly. I think we're doing better than most people are giving us credit for. Kelsea looks like she'd rather run in the opposite direction, and I don't blame her for it.

The rain is coming down even harder than it was when we started, so hard that it's getting difficult to see.

Sure enough, it is Camden. He landed just face up enough that at least the right half of his face is mostly distinguishable, if not a bit warped by the rain. At least it's not doing anything to us. I avoid looking down towards his legs, because that's not exactly a sight I need burned into my memory, and one of his arms is twisted awkwardly behind him, nearly in half. The backpack in question is practically crushed beneath him. Kelsea stands on the other side of him and swallows.

"Okay, just help me turn him over."

To reiterate, it's not just Kelsea that would rather run a hundred miles away than turn over his corpse to take something off of him.

Kelsea grabs the arm that's at least mostly still intact and helps me shove him over, until he tips onto his side. It's so odd to still be thinking of this body as a living, breathing person. Like he could wake up any minute and bring hell down on us for trying it. I know there's too much blood for him to be anything but dead, but the thought is still there all the same. I hold him still while Kelsea maneuvers the straps off of his shoulders. It strikes me that she's trying to be gentle here, going slowly like she doesn't want to disturb something. She mutters something under her breath, something that almost sounds like _sorry._

There's no question in my mind. He wasn't a good person. Yet both of us feel bad about it anyway.

Finally she's got the backpack in her hands, not even bothering to hook it over her shoulders. She wraps both arms around it and hugs it against her chest, almost like a shield. From that angle it's probably at least hiding most of his body from her view.

"Let's go," I say, and hold out my hand. Much to my surprise she doesn't take it, still hugging the backpack against her as she steps gingerly over his legs.

I don't understand how either of us can feel all that bad about this. We didn't kill him, toss him over the bridge like he was hardly a person at all. We're not the ones responsible for putting him in the ground, literally and figuratively.

I stand there for a moment, the rain washing over me, as Kelsea heads back for the tower. Looking up, I can see the silhouettes of several people standing on the bridge. I wonder if it was any of them that had the strength to do it, mentally or physically. I wonder if whoever did it feels the same way we did, looking at him just now.

Maybe, maybe not.

It looks like there's a lot of things headed that way.

I turn around. Kelsea's standing in the doorway, soaked to the bone, and finally holds out her own hand, never letting go of the backpack.

I may feel bad about it, but there's no point in standing around here while I do it.

* * *

 **Olympia Kuidas, 13 years, District Eight Female.**

* * *

I can't believe I just did that.

I ran in the opposite direction away from my only ally, an eighteen year old boy who is stronger than me in every sense of the word, who could have probably given me a chance in here, and I did it on purpose.

I said he was stronger than me in every respect. Not everything, though.

Not mentally.

When those words left his mouth during his interview, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew I reminded him of his sister, knew that he was completely family-oriented and caring and protective, but I didn't think it was that _bad_. I thought he would try his hardest to get back to them because that's what meant the most to him. I didn't think he'd give that up just to prove he was unchangeable.

He still would've been a good ally, but when it came down to it, what use would he have been? I'd have earned a few extra seconds while whoever came after us killed him when he got in-between us, and then me when they finally caught up. Besides, it's not like I've seen him since we went running in opposite directions from the ground. If I do see him, I'm not sure what I'll do.

There's no way he suspects that I did it on purpose, and a little part of me feels bad for it. Zion would never think something like that about me, never think that the one person he trusted was so willing to leave him behind.

And I don't want him to die thinking that.

He's going to die. I take a deep breath and accept that one night I'll have to look up and see his face in the sky, if I want to be there at the end of all of this.

The only issue is, being alone right now kind of sucks.

Every nerve-ending in my body feels frayed. I'm reacting too quickly to everything, at the flicker of something out of the corner of my eye. It's dark in here, the walls so red they nearly look black. There's furniture over-turned on the bare floors. I lean down and pick up the end of a broken chair leg, splintered on one end. Definitely not a good thing to be carrying around, but it's better than nothing. It's also reassuring, to not be bumbling around with empty hands just waiting for someone to find me.

What isn't reassuring is the giant blood splatter all along the opposite wall.

I freeze, staring at it. It doesn't _look_ fresh, but what the hell do I know about blood? All I'm really certain of right now is that there's a lot of it, and when I lean around the corner to continue down the hallway it doesn't stop. There's a few drops of it on the tiled floor under my feet too.

So let's add that to the list of completely terrible things I've got going on right now. I'm freezing, and whoever decided the knee holes in my pants were a good idea are stupid, first and foremost, and if I could have some gloves that actually served any purpose I would really appreciate it right about now. There's blood everywhere like someone's limp body got dragged down the hallway and all I've got is a _stick_.

"It's not any of ours."

Later, I'll completely deny the unearthly shriek that escapes me at the voice. Right now it's all I can do to whirl around, still clutching tight to the chair leg like it's going to save me.

The Twelve guy - Jaeden? - is standing in one of the doorways behind me, just staring. And if he's been there the whole time, I walked past him thirty seconds ago and didn't even notice. The list just keeps getting longer.

"What are you doing?" I ask him, hoping that masks how terrified I sound. It probably doesn't.

"Just wondering how you were going to fight a blood splatter with a chair leg."

"I'm going to fight _you_ with it in a second."

He makes a noise under his breath, so there goes that illusion. He's not even holding onto anything, so who is he to say that I wouldn't actually do it?

"Seriously, who's head are you going to bash that in with?" he asks. "Who's head can you even _reach_?"

"Shut up," I hiss. This is not funny. This is, in fact, completely the opposite of funny and the temptation to actually see if I can reach his head with it is getting stronger by the second. Maybe he wouldn't even see it coming.

"You seen any actual weapons around this place?" he continues, finally. He steps out of the doorway. The door was already broken off it's hinges, half laying on the ground, and when he walks towards me he makes sure to skirt a wide circle around the area I'm standing in.

"Do you think if I had I'd be holding a chair leg?"

He shrugs, and keeps on walking. It occurs to me that even though I have zero idea who he is this is the least terrified I've felt since I realized that by running away from Zion I was on my own. Maybe he would've killed me, if he had a proper weapon. I don't doubt it. There's a reason he stuck to himself during training. Less attachment that way, less inclination to spare someone's life.

He's still walking away. Soon he'll be around the next corner, out of sight. Every once in a while he stops to peer in one of the doorways, checking for something useful, but he never looks back at me.

I take a deep breath. "I'm coming with you!"

My voice echoes down the hallway, and I wince. There's still nineteen other people out there, somewhere.

Jaeden doesn't break stride. "No, you're not."

Yeah, right. Like he can stop me.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

Not a single thing we just did was right.

I don't know how it happened, or when, but Parker's managed to corral me into a room that at least has a semi-intact door. Better than publicly freaking out in the middle of the hallway where anyone could decide to come over to investigate whatever the hell noises I'm making.

We don't even know where Early _is_. That's the whole reason we decided to go to the Cornucopia in the first place, because we assumed that she had gone there as well. Not the greatest of plans, apparently, because look where it got us. Early is still missing. Could be dead, for all we know, until we see the anthem tonight. That would leave one other person to figure out.

Because we already know Laurel's the third.

I keep seeing it, over and over again. I hadn't even seen the Four girl move, not really. One second Laurel was fine and I thought that the three of us could get away from it mostly intact, and the next Laurel's blood was spewing out all over the glass bridge and all over the front of the Four girl's shirt.

Closing my eyes doesn't even help. Every time I open them I see the color of the walls, red as the blood that's now staining the bridge under Laurel's corpse, and it comes back all over again.

"Rooke."

"Not helping right now," I say, still keeping my eyes closed. For all Parker's trying, he's nowhere near a good shoulder to lean on. He cares, I think, but not to the agree that I do. That I did.

And that's what it all comes down to, isn't it? Sure, I knew Laurel wasn't going to be the best, or the strongest fighter. But I thought that I could help her, that we could help each other in the long run. I had meant that, even when other people doubted it. And what had I done, when something bad finally happened? I turned tail and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction with no other thought than the one that I didn't want to be next.

I wonder how long she lasted, after we left. If it happened instantaneously or if she clung to life for a few seconds, enough to recognize the fact that we left her.

I feel more than see Parker sit down in front of me.

"We should go look for supplies."

Yeah. _Should_. I have approximately zero idea what a panic attack feels like, but it has to be pretty close to what I'm feeling right now. Parker doesn't say anything else, although he probably wants to. I just wish he was reacting to all of this like I am. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so useless, or confused, whereas he doesn't seem affected by this at all.

"You are seriously so weird," I manage eventually.

"As you've mentioned before," he says, and I crack open my eyes. He sits in front of me like nothing's happened at all, casually glancing around the room. There's not much in here to really look at. Deep down, I know he's right, and I'm not going to freak out on him for it. We've got absolutely nothing. No weapons or supplies, not even food or water. We're not going to last long if we don't figure something out.

"I'm sorry," Parker says, and I blink at him.

"For what?"

"I know you two were close. Closer than I was, at any rate. You probably didn't think you'd end up stuck with just me."

He's right. I didn't. But if Laurel and I hadn't been nice to him that first day then he probably wouldn't be here at all, and for all I know I'd be on my own right now, one ally dead and the other missing, if Early had bothered joining us at all. That was all Parker too, really. I don't think Laurel would have made the effort she did had Parker not put the idea in our heads.

My skin's still burning, a phantom feeling from the rain. Using the wall for support I push myself onto my feet, trying to breath evenly. I hold out my hand to Parker, who takes it and pulls himself up next to me.

"Should we go?" Parker asks. I think that's the first time he's asked me anything.

"Why not," I sigh. It's not like there's anything else to do. The sky has already grown darker. I don't know how much time has passed since the bloodbath, but it has to be longer than what it feels.

There's a part of me that still feels like it's out there on that bridge.

Parker brushes the broken glass off the windowsill and picks up some of it, putting it in his pockets. There's no windows in here that are intact, but maybe that's a blessing in disguise. He turns, offering me one of the pieces.

I don't want it, not really, but I take it from him anyway.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

There's something really off about this whole place.

I can't put my finger on it, and it's infuriating. Oeshe doesn't really appear to be concerned, constantly darting forward to check things out. Not that there's anything to really look at. It's the same stuff everywhere. Everything's white and pale, ghostly even. The movement of sheets out of the corner of my eye is enough to make a person jumpy in a normal scenario.

I'm determined not to let it bug me.

The only reassuring thing is that I at least have the backpack now. I finally convinced Oeshe to give it to me after watching her run through one too many doorways, half-convinced that by the time I followed her through something would have already dragged her off, screaming down the hallway.

Having that thought in the back of your mind isn't great. Besides, I'm the one that had to shank someone to get it.

It's not like there's much in it anyway.

Oeshe disappears through the next doorway. By the time I follow her my stomach is lurching. There's that feeling again, like something terrible is going to happen and I don't know what direction it's going to come from.

"Boo," Oeshe says flatly. She's got a sheet clasped in both hands and is waving it around in front of her as I pass through the doorway.

"Not funny," I inform her and she waves the sheet at me.

"Yes it is."

We are both acting far too weird for two people who just participated in killing two more separate people. The main issue seems to be that we have no idea where Dimara ended up after Oeshe left her alone with Tavian. Judging by what Oeshe said, there's nothing that could've went so wrong as to have ended with Dimara dying, but we don't know that for sure.

That feeling in my stomach only gets worse, as we continue on. She never gets behind me for more than two seconds. At the next corner she disappears into a room with an open doorway, and I start walking slower.

"Oh, sweet!" she crows, voice oddly distant, and I flinch. She comes sliding out of the room, sheet still clutched in one hand. In the other she's holding onto something about the size of her hand. The handle is ornate and decorative but the opposite end is long and thin, pointed at one end. She whirls around, trying to escape the sheet that she for some reason won't let go of, and finally looks at me.

"Letter opener, dude! We're set now— why the fuck is your ear bleeding?"

I stop, and lift my hand up. Sure enough, the inside of my ear is wet, and when I touch the spot just below it my fingers come away bloody. What the fuck?

Oeshe is looking at me funny, now. "No offense, but you look kind of terrible."

No offense, but I kind of _feel_ terrible. I was mostly attributing it to the nerves, and the anxiety that comes with wondering what's around the next corner.

"Do _you_ feel okay?" I ask her, eventually, pressing a hand against my ear.

"I mean, my hands are still a little tingly, but you know, acid rain," she offers. "Not like. Bleeding from holes you shouldn't be bleeding from bad."

There's no way this is good. I catch a glimpse of one of the discarded surgical masks on the ground not far from our feet and narrow my eyes. I knew something wasn't right the second we stepped foot in here, but I didn't think it would involve anything like this. Now that I'm really focusing on it, I can taste blood in the back of my mouth and when I catch a glimpse of a shadow, far down the other hallway, Oeshe doesn't turn to follow my gaze.

How much of this is even real?

"I think—"

Oeshe doesn't get a chance to finish that sentence, even really start it, before I feel something bubbling up. And this time it's not figurative.

It's all I can do to turn to the side to save my shoes before everything I put in my body this morning comes right back up, except half of it's blood. Red, splattering all over the floor by my feet. I put my hand on the wall, trying to steady myself, but the blood keeps dripping out of my mouth, never-ending. It feels like I'm going to pass out more and more by the second, and we hardly have any food and little water and I might be close to admitting fear, right about now.

When I look back up, Oeshe's gone.

* * *

 **Oeshe Ito, 18 years, District Eleven Female.**

* * *

I don't even think.

I just run.

Whatever's happening there, happening to Celia, I want no part of it. She's still throwing up almost nothing but blood by the time I feel my feet moving, my brain having no decision on the matter.

There's no way out of this building except the bridges and the ground. Those three assholes are probably still camping out at the Cornucopia, which means I've got a long way down to run. It doesn't matter, though. As long as whatever's happening to her doesn't happen to me I can live with running.

I almost feel like a coward. Anyone else would have stepped forward, maybe, but a hand on her back and told her that everything was going to be okay. I could've killed her, too. The letter opener is still in my hand, but that thought didn't even cross my mind. She was an ally. A friend. Her and Dimara gave me a chance when any other year they probably wouldn't have, and it was more than I could've asked for.

Yet here I am, one ally lost and the other getting further and further behind with the faster I run.

Finally, I find the stairwell, and start downwards. I should've tried to take the backpack, too. There's no way she would've been able to stop me, not in that state. I wouldn't have even had to kill her to do it.

I don't think anything's ever hit me that hard. You see fucked up things all the time in Eleven, people with missing limbs, others starving to death on the side of the road, or hell, one or two people who get stung to death by tracker jackers out in the field before there's even anyone alerted to it. But watching the one person you still had go from absolutely fine to holding the wall, her blood all over the floor by your feet and it wasn't even your fault...

Whoever wouldn't run deserves an award.

I don't expect Celia to follow, but I still find myself looking upwards, waiting for the door to open. For her to shout after me, even if she doesn't have the strength to chase me.

Before all of this, I prided myself on never letting things get to me. I helped kill someone earlier today and that's affecting me less.

But selfish I still know how to do.

I have to stop, eventually, somewhere between the fifteenth and tenth floor, trying to catch my breath. I crack open the door and step out into the hallway, leaning against the wall. Should I even bother heading somewhere else? The rain is still coming down like it doesn't plan on stopping, and after what I went through earlier I don't have any desire to go traipsing around in it again.

I may not have a choice, though. If it was dark sixty floors up it's even worse down here. There's almost no light at all, and Celia still has the flashlight, tucked safely into her backpack.

I tighten my grip on the letter opener. At least I have the comfort that I'm probably one of the only people in here with something resembling a weapon.

There's a room with a balcony to my right and I step into it. There's not much light, but it's better than the hallway. The sky is getting darker and darker by the second, though. I'll probably be spending the night in complete darkness, hoping someone doesn't step on me. Not exactly my idea of a fun time, but it's not like I have an issue with going for their legs if they do.

Something catches my eye, though. Out over the balcony, across to the red tower. There's a beam of light bouncing around, cutting through a window about the same height as mine. Someone with a flashlight, then. Which means they probably have a backpack. I lean as close as I can to the balcony without letting the rain hit me and watch.

Whoever it is, they're not moving all that fast. It's probably no better over there.

I know they're there, whereas they have no idea I'm watching them.

I glance back towards the door. Here, or there. Alone in the dark all night with almost nothing to my name or taking a chance at finding someone else, for the better or worse. The rain doesn't seem very daunting, when I put it like that. It'll only take me a minute to cross the soaked earth and get in that tower, anyway.

I take a deep breath and head for the door again.

Guess I made my mind up without even realizing.

Seems like that's happening a lot.

* * *

 **Shirin Azami, 17 years, District Three Male.**

* * *

We might actually have to move soon.

If the rain doesn't let up soon, it's going to start flooding into the Cornucopia, and then we'll have nowhere else to go. All of us seem to be having problems with it. There's no one person here able to fix the problem.

There's only so many times we can go through the two backpacks, anyway. They have the exact same supplies, no weapons. Only two half-full water bottles and some crackers and jerky in the form of food, and that's it. We won't last long on it. Besides that there's a flashlight each, and a first aid kit filled with just the basics. There's nothing about bandages that's going to stop acid rain, however.

Isi's been stalking back and forth in front of the mouth of the Cornucopia for a while now, wringing her hands together. Since Dimara, we haven't seen a single soul. No one else chancing their luck on meager supplies, it seems.

"Sit down," I say finally. She ignores me, no surprise there.

"Should just push her out there, see what happens," Tanis mutters under her breath. Even I have to admit that Isi's anger is getting excessive, if not annoying. I understand that she wants to go, but the fact of the matter is we're just barely more equipped than most of the others out there. If we held the Cornucopia and all of it's weapons we'd be writing a different story.

That's not the story that's meant to be, though.

The issue is, Isi doesn't seem to care, and I don't think she ever will. Just like I don't think we should head out there she's never going to stop wanting to.

If Camden were still here, we wouldn't be sitting here at all. Who knows what happened to Tavian, and where Nadir is now. There's no use wondering, or caring. Our alliance has been halfed in just under twelve hours, and it doesn't really seem like a surprise at all.

Some things are just destined for destruction.

"It has to stop eventually," Isi decides, looking upwards. It does, even I agree with that, but that time could be five minutes from now or three days. There's no telling.

"And what if it doesn't?" Tanis asks. The issue seems to be that the longer we stay here, the more likely it is that one of us ends up dying for it. Whether through outside intervention or because Isi can no longer stand it, I'm not sure.

There's a slight, barely-there beeping off somewhere to our left, and I freeze. Isi is opening her mouth, about to retort, when I stand up.

"Shut up," I snap, and point out of the Cornucopia. Isi leans out of it just the slightest bit, and a smile breaks out across her face.

"Finally," she insists, still smiling, and disappears.

She returns only a few minutes later clutching a parachute, dripping wet, although she doesn't seem to care about the burn. Most of the time she's acted as if it hasn't effected her at all, and it would be believable if not for the redness of her skin. Maybe things like that seem trivial to people like her.

Isi unwraps the parachute and grins.

"That's not for you," Tanis says flatly. The parachute's not numbered, but we all know exactly who it's for. It's a bonesaw. I know one when I see one. There's no way Isi's even ever held one, judging by the look on her face, but it's like I said.

There's a lot of things that don't matter, to people like her.

She waves it at me, almost tauntingly, and smiles.

"You can have this once we find someone. Let's go."

* * *

Welcome to hell!

Massive pro-tip for this arena, because it got brought up: don't bother trying to keep track of who is where, because I gave up after like three chapters when I realized what I needed to do wasn't always lining up, and there's no doubt a dozen discrepancies for who ended up where at what time. Let's just say everyone moved a lot.

Thank you for the kind thoughts and reviews last chapter, and I hope you're enjoying the Games thus far! As much as one can enjoy this shit, anyway.

Until next time.


	19. Bad Moon Rising

Arena, Night One.

* * *

 **Isi Akiloff, 17 years, District Five Female.**

* * *

We're inside the red tower for hardly two minutes when it happens.

I'm in the lead, picking a tower at random, when everything goes deathly silent. Behind me, Shirin stops, and then Tanis, and when I finally stop too I can't hear _anything_ , other than the thud of my own heart.

The walls almost seem to come to life. The blood splatters brighten all of a sudden, but it's not just them. It's the air around us, the sky.

The rain's stopped.

Tanis crosses to the nearest window and peers out of it, making a face. I shove my way in next to her. The red light is casting a harsh, ghoulish glare across both of our faces. It's not just the air. It's the sky itself, entirely red, not a cloud in sight. Whatever happened to the rain, it disappeared awfully fast. In it's place now is the moon, red as blood, hanging directly above the bridges, the Cornucopia.

Do they _ever_ stop with the dramatics?

"Blood moon," Shirin supplies, like I didn't already fucking know that. It's kind of hard not to know when it's staring you right in the face.

"That's kinda cool," Tanis says, although she's still making a face. I'm inclined to agree with her. Dramatic yes, but it adds a certain flair to things. And besides, it better than the damn rain burning us whenever we take a step outside. It's also made it a little easier to see. I was about to take the flashlight out - better than stumbling over my damn feet waiting to walk into someone. Red light is better than none, apparently.

"Alright, show's over," I announce, grabbing the back of Tanis' jacket and pulling her away from the window. "Moving on."

It feels like there should be more to see. The Cornucopia didn't have much, but it certainly has more than the rest of this place. Lots of broken furniture and kicked in doors, walls that look like they're hardly standing. It's not like I expected there to be food or weapons just lying in the corner, but it would be nice.

I feel solid enough, holding onto the bonesaw. It was enough to spur the other two into moving, because they don't want me holding onto it forever. I'd almost take that as an insult, but that's not enough to wound me. I don't care or not, whether Tanis and Shirin trust me. They don't need to. Right now, where we are, I just need them to follow me.

This really would have been so much easier, if Camden was still here. No one would have questioned _him_.

No one should be questioning me, not either, but they don't really know me. They were all too fixated on him as the leader that they never considered they'd be following a back-up option.

I should never have been the back-up option in the first place.

"We should be looking for water," Shirin points out, eventually, and I can't help but scoff.

"You can look for water," I throw back. "I'm looking for _people_. Let me know when you have an idea that's actually worthwhile and maybe I'll consider listening to it."

I have no idea what Shirin's deal is, if he's not really willing to kill someone or if he just genuinely doesn't think it's worth it, right now. Even Tanis hasn't voiced any dissent, much to my surprise, but she's not doing it for me. I don't think she cares about who lives and who dies, anymore. When Camden fell everything split apart. Oddly enough, with him around, we may have actually worked as a unit.

Now? Not so much.

But I've never worked well in a unit anyway.

"Hold on," Tanis says a few minutes later. I'm about to ignore her and keep walking when she grabs the tail end of my shirt and quite literally drags me to a halt, pulling me back to her. Apparently now I need to introduce a hands off policy, for god's sake.

"Just look for a second," she continues, and releases me. Again, I'm about to start walking, when I really _look_. She's pointing down at the ground, but then her finger moves, tracing down the hallway, across the walls. I follow with my eyes, watching. It's hard to see, and for a second I almost think I'm imagining it, but I think they're shadows. They almost look like mist, swirling along the ground, but it's moving like it's alive, as dark as the sky. They're all around our feet too, looking like they're about to tangle around our ankles, but they keep moving. Disappearing down the hallway and curling around the corner like we weren't standing here at all.

"That is not normal," Shirin says, as the last of them disappear from view. I jog after them, to the next corner, even as Tanis opens her mouth to try and warn me away.

I get to the next hallway just in time to see them disappear through the gaps in the stairwell's door, filtering through the bottom and around the sides. Tanis nearly runs straight into my back, apparently not having assumed that I had stopped. She's not wrong. This is probably the first time that's happened.

Those things, the shadows, whatever they are, are moving with a purpose.

"Think they're telling us where to go?" Tanis asks quietly. The hallway is silent once again as the shadows disappear, taking their faint hissing noise with them. I hadn't even noticed it until right now.

It's either that, or they're leading us to something very, very bad.

They're not going to get entertainment without us, though. I severely doubt they'd be trying to get rid of us this early, especially now that we have a real weapon. There's no way they'd do it. In the end they're all cowards anyway.

Which means someone's down there.

* * *

 **Jaeden Hillion, 15 years, District Twelve Male.**

* * *

"Shut up for a second."

Olympia just does not know when to quit. I told her not to follow me, and then to fuck off five minutes later when she refused, and it doesn't seem to have deterred her in the slightest. I think most of her current chattering is due to nerves, because if she talks this much normally I'm sure her District partner would have walked off the roof before he ever got here.

I don't know if I'm being too harsh, or if she really is just annoying me to the point of no return.

It's not necessarily bad to have company. I wouldn't call her an ally, not even close, but at least her voice is mostly stopping me from thinking about the red moon outside and the flickering things in the corners of my vision. I don't know how much of it she's really paying attention to. Maybe she's talking so much to distract _herself_ from it.

I guess it's better than what I'm doing, which is aimlessly looking around for supplies that I'm convinced don't exist at this point.

Despite my earlier words, Olympia doesn't cut herself off. She's moved onto her younger siblings now, who's names I've forgotten already. The only reassurance I have at this point is that she has to sleep sometime, and I can leave then. Put enough distance between us that she won't be able to find me.

I almost feel bad. Right now it's not just me that's the street rat, it's practically all of us. We're all hungry and cold and thirsty and trying to wish ourselves out of an impossible situation.

There's a loud slam from further down the hallway and Olympia yelps, quickly slapping a hand over her own mouth to cut it off.

"What was that?" Olympia whispers, and I hold up a finger. For real, it's now time to _shut the hell up_.

To me, that sounded like the stairwell door. It's one of the only ones on this floor that we've seen intact thus far. And then, distantly, two or three voices, talking back and forth to each other. I gesture backwards, frantically, and Olympia takes off. There's more than one stairwell on this floor, we've seen them. Now we just have to backtrack and hopefully get to it before whoever that is figures out we're here.

I start backing up after her, but apparently I misjudged how far away they were.

Isi leans around the corner, shadows swirling around her feet, and smiles at me.

Oh god.

I start running.

Isi shouts to whoever's behind her just as I round the first corner. Olympia's at the other end of the hallway, propping open one of the other stairwell doors with her shoulder. I'm already beginning to take back every terrible thing I've said about her thus far. Issue is, I don't know how we're getting away from this. They're too close to us. Wherever we go they're going to see us.

I nearly crash into Olympia I'm running so fast, but she doesn't move. She's got one shoulder holding the door open and I squeeze through the gap she's left.

"Now's not the time to stand around, let's go."

She looks down the hallway, towards the other group. Definitely three of them, and we're still just standing here. Why are we still standing here?

Olympia looks up at me. "I'm sorry."

I'm still wondering what the hell she's talking about when she lets go of the door, and slams both of her hands into my chest so hard that I go staggering backwards. Directly towards the stairs, I realize, just as I go flying over the top two of them. I hit the middle of the stairs with a thud, and feel something crack in my side. I don't stop there, though. I flip over two more times before I hit the next landing, and I'm almost sure something else snaps in my ribcage, just before I land, half on my side and half on my face.

I'm trying to figure out how to breathe and what way's up when I see Olympia go thundering past me, continuing down the stairs. She doesn't even look back.

Someone comes crashing through the door above me before I even fully manage to sit up, pain licking all up my side. Sure enough, when I finally manage to look up, it's Isi staring down at me. I grab the railing and try to pull myself up but I can hardly stand, with how bad the pain is, and my head's spinning.

Olympia's two, three floors down by now, and no one's even bothering to go after her because I'm just sitting here waiting for it.

That's exactly why she did it.

Did I just get played by a thirteen year old?

Isi holds up both of her hands. "Hey, hey. No need to try and run. It's fine."

I think her words would be a lot more reassuring if she wasn't holding some sort of rickety looking saw in her right hand, waving it around like she does it all the time for fun. She starts down the stairs towards me, both of her allies behind her, and there's nowhere to go. I try to scramble backwards anyway, but she only gets closer, and I already see her arm moving.

I'm halfway across the landing when the saw hits, somewhere between my ankle and the middle of the shin. I don't even think of screaming, it just _happens_ , and the next time I look down Isi is stopping me from sliding any further backwards by the saw she's got sticking out of my fucking leg.

At first I think it's the ringing in my head, but finally I realize the pinging is a parachute, hitting the landing above us. Isi's still holding tight to the saw, buried deep in my leg, but at the sight of it she smiles and rips the saw out. This time I do scream, as a fresh wave of blood leaks out of my leg, splattering all over the landing. I wonder if Olympia can hear me screaming. I wonder if she even cares.

"Here," Isi says, and tosses the saw back to Shirin. "Didn't want it anyway."

She jogs back up the stairs without a care in the word and unwraps the parachute. Three knives tumble out into her palm and she looks like she just opened a birthday present, like this is something that just happens every day to her.

Two of the knives go to her belt but she keeps the third in her hand, twirling it around her fingers. I swallow.

"Remember, it's fine," she repeats, as she starts back down the stairs towards me.

Everything is decidedly not fine.

* * *

 **Farren Laboy, 17 years, District Six Female.**

* * *

I think I know something's wrong with Vance before even he does.

It's not like there's much else to pay attention to. This whole place looks like a really weird, creepy version of a hospital, everything clinically white. I don't know if Casper's really been paying attention to his surroundings at all, no surprise there, but at least Vance is looking around. He produces a scalpel from an otherwise empty drawer that's now tucked away safely in his pocket, but that's about it.

I'm almost afraid to touch the food and water because we haven't seen any, and I don't want us to be starving three days from now.

But Vance has been trailing behind for a while, now. Casper has been too but like I said, he's been doing that the entire time, and I've stopped thinking twice about it. Maybe the two of them haven't really noticed, but I have.

I don't know exactly what's happening, and I'm not exactly prepared or willing to find out, but I don't get a choice.

The next time Vance leans down to check something out, he stands back up and nearly collapses.

It's only by some miracle that Casper's actually looking when it happens, and has the frame of mind to stop Vance from falling and smashing his head open the floor in front of the both of us. By the time I get to them Vance's nose is dripping blood and he's looking at me like he hardly remembers nearly falling over in the first place, and Casper is looking at me with barely disguised panic. And he's not even the one bleeding.

Great. That's just perfect.

"Okay, you're sitting down," I inform Vance, and Casper very carefully lowers him to the floor. I don't even think I'd trust him to be standing up on his own right now. He very slowly puts his head between his knees, grimacing, and presses his hand to the bottom of his nose.

"You good?"

"I'll get back to you on that one."

Casper's staring at me nervously, and I shrug helplessly. Why am I the one that's supposed to know what's going on? Vance's nose is still bleeding at an alarming rate, the steady _drip_ as it hits the floor between his knees one of the only things I can really focus on.

Well, that, and the beeping I hear coming from the hallway.

"Go," I tell Casper, and he at least listens, headed for the doorway.

"I think if I look up right now I'll probably throw up," Vance informs me, helpful as ever. I fold my hands over his where they're digging into his knees.

"Just keep your head there then, it's fine."

Casper's footsteps come pounding back down the hallway. I hadn't even noticed him leave, really.

"Dude, holy shit."

"Please tell me that was a good holy shit and not a bad one," Vance pleads, still not looking up, as I turn around to face Casper. He's holding a parachute in one hand and a sword the length of his forearm in the other, staring at me with wide eyes. Definitely a good holy shit, then. He steps forward and offers it to me. Clearly he doesn't want it, then, and I can't say I blame him. I place it on the ground next to Vance's side, and he turns his head, very carefully, peeking out from under his knees.

"That looks expensive," is all he manages, and I have to agree with him. That's probably more generous than anything I ever thought we would deserve.

I don't know what I'm waiting for, when I put the sword down. For him to stop bleeding, maybe, but it doesn't happen. What am I supposed to do? I'm not a doctor. I don't know what's happening to him any more than Casper does.

"Should you be touching him?" Casper asks after a minute, staring at the two of us warily. He's standing a solid few feet away, watching.

" _You_ already touched him," I point out, and Casper's eyes widen, like he had forgotten. Besides, if this is something like a sickness, something that's contagious, then Vance had to have gotten it from somewhere, and it certainly wasn't us. That means it's this place, the air all around us, and if that's the truth we're screwed no matter what we do. No point in abandoning him for it, like I would ever do that in the first place.

"We need to move somewhere with an actual door. Just come and help me."

Casper hesitates for a moment, and I almost panic. I can see it now, him running in the opposite direction because he's too fearful of the same thing happening to him. I won't lie, that thought's already occurred to me, and I'm equally terrified.

But I was already terrified.

The longer I stare at him the more Casper caves, and eventually he makes his way over to us and grabs one of Vance's arms.

"Alright. Up you get."

"Sounds fantastic," Vance mutters sarcastically, as I shove my shoulder under his and tuck the sword into my belt. I'm convinced that if the two of us weren't holding onto him right now he'd still be on the floor, where he'd remain for who knows how long. How he went from seemingly fine to this fragile, weak shell of a person is beyond me, and it's terrifying.

"Just don't throw up on me," Casper says, and judging by Vance's lack of a response, I'm not going to be surprised if it happens.

I think if I stopped getting surprised by things, it'll make this a whole lot easier.

* * *

 **Rodrik Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

I've been seeing things for a while now.

I have no idea where Anya is, and I don't think I'll ever find her. I started to see things in double about an hour ago and it's only multiplied by then. There's nothing I can do that'll make it stop, the pain in my stomach and chest only getting worse the longer I move around. It's when it takes me nearly ten minutes to get down a single flight of stairs that I realize I should probably stop.

Issue is, there's nowhere to go. It feels like there's not a single other person in this arena right now besides me, and that no matter how far I walk there's going to be nothing and no one to help me. My stomach's been rumbling for a while now, though it's up for debate about whether that's the hunger or whatever else is going on inside of me. There's nowhere to find water, either, at least not that I've found.

I don't know long I'll make it, without those things, feeling the way I am. I'd rather have someone spear me right through the stomach than die curled in on myself, choking up my own blood while it feels like my chest is about to get split into two separate pieces.

One of my legs nearly gives out when I finally make it to the landing, and I'm hardly able to catch myself on the railing.

Looks like the latter is more likely to happen than I was hoping.

I let myself slide awkwardly onto the ground, right in the middle of the stairwell where anyone with eyes and two working legs could stumble upon me and put me out of my misery. Not that I'm exactly opposed to the idea. The railing is digging into the back of my head but right now it's about the only thing that's probably keeping me from giving up and just passing out, so I'll take it.

I had accepted death in pretty much every form, except this. I apparently wasn't even capable of imagining feeling this terrible.

There's a noise from down the stairs, and I turn my head, but everything spins and the stairs blur in front of me. Whatever it was, I don't hear it again. If I ever really heard it in the first place.

It's about that time that something flickers above me, too, about two doors up. I blink, but nothing snaps into focus. Nothing distinct enough to really be a person, but with the only source of light being the red moon pouring in nearly three floors up, for all I know it could be. It's not like I'm the most reliable person to be asking about danger right now.

I can already taste the blood in my mouth when my nose starts bleeding.

When I look upwards the stairwell door is open, but I blink and it's closed again. There's still noises, coming from down below, but they sound distant and far away, almost like I'm underwater. It feels a lot like that, actually, like things are happening all around me but I'm not exactly sure what, or what direction it's coming from. There's only two options but even that feels like too much to really comprehend.

I can't stay here. I shouldn't. Surely someone, somewhere, is yelling at me to do anything than just sit here and wait for something to actually be concrete. The only thing I'm really sure about is the floor beneath me, that's slowly leaching every ounce of warmth out of my body, and the railing that's still digging painfully into my skull and the base of my spine.

I keep hearing things, though, and it's almost too hard to drown them all out. Slowly they're morphing into something that almost sounds like voices, but they pass through one ear and right out the other in no time at all. Too fast enough to make any sense.

I can't stay here, but I don't know how much further I can move.

Very slowly I tip myself onto my side, at least getting my hands underneath me. Maybe I can move like that. Crawling down the stairs at least has to end up better than attempting to walk down them. I press my forehead into the floor, because at least like that I can squeeze my eyes shut and pretend that whatever I'm seeing is completely fake. It may not actually be.

I can still hear everything, though, almost too clear.

I drag myself across the other end of the landing. My knees drag through the blood spatters my nose leaves behind, smearing all across the concrete.

The next door looks so far away. Too far. Maybe once I'm there I'll be able to get to my feet, where the ground actually looks solid and not like it's shimmering and wavering beneath my feet. That can't be real, either.

Can it?

It feels like I can hardly breathe, like my lungs are ready to give up on me any second now. It wouldn't even surprise me.

I just want it to stop. The pain, the shifting of the very ground below me, the voices drifting slowly in and out, quickly getting louder and louder.

I just want everything to stop.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

I still haven't quite decided if I made a mistake or not.

I think it would help a lot if I didn't feel bad about it, for whatever stupid reason. I went into that alliance of my own free will, and Tanis tried to warn me away. That has to be it. She tried to help me when I apparently got too in over my head in this entire situation.

I'm not really used to having people help me, I guess. I'm so used to it just being terrible thing after terrible thing and no one ever having the power to stop it. Tanis didn't at the end of the day, just like most people don't, but she tried. And that's worth more than a lot of people think. Now she's alone with the two of them.

And two of our allies are dead.

A cannon rings out, and minutes later the anthem is blaring out across the arena. I'd been sticking near the windows anyway, clinging to as much light as I could in the otherwise black tower, and somehow I'm still surprised.

I stuck around long enough, not far from the ground, to see Tavian die. Maybe I should have intervened, but I don't think I could have done anything against Dimara and Oeshe, not on my own. The rest of my alliance was too focused on going after Camden to even care. It didn't bug me like I thought it would, either. I knew he'd be on our side if he lived but I think the second I saw the life go out of him was the second I decided I was done.

I saw Camden hit the ground, too, something like weariness settling over me, but by then I had already started running.

The Nine girl's body was mostly hidden by my former allies, when I got to the bridge, but somehow it's not really a surprise.

The biggest surprise of all is Jaeden's face.

I freeze, and blink a few times. His face is still in the sky no matter what angle I look at it from, tinged with red. I knew him going into it alone was a bad idea, but I thought that was how he operated. I thought he was stronger than most kids Twelve usually picks, that he would have about the same chance I did.

His face looks down on me now, dead twelve hours in.

If he had the same chance I did and he's already gone, then did I make the wrong decision? For all I know I'm next. Almost everyone else had an alliance going into this, and I've got them against me plus my former allies, who I don't think will be quite so willing to welcome me back with open arms should I decide to go crawling back to them. I can't do that. I won't. I won't grovel at their feet for a chance at redemption when I shouldn't be faulted for running in the first place.

Just like Jaeden, maybe I'm better off alone. It certainly feels that way.

There's no one to stab me in the back, to keep an eye on me should I decide to change the tides. Nothing like Thane's eyes on the back of my neck, just waiting for an opportunity to strike.

I'm not afraid of the dark, or of the things that could be in it.

Suddenly everything seems very easy, a sudden clarity settling over me. Everything seemed so complicated, in that moment, with Tanis and the others looking back at me, none the wiser to what I was thinking. I apologized, too. Not to them, but to Tanis, because I know we were supposed to be in this together. Maybe somewhere along the line fate will bring us back to that.

Fate has been fucking with me too often, though. It always seems like I'm just waiting for the next thing to spiral out of control.

I've got nothing to my name, completely bare, and it almost feels a little freeing. There's no one to stop me here, to take control of my life and ruin it in the next second. Maybe that in itself is a little fucked up, enjoying the freedom this place brings me. Nothing good has happened here, and nothing will. I'm about to leave, too, when I catch sight of the electrical cords, snaking out from one of the broken desks. There's no power to be found in this building, no real danger. I reach down and rip the plug out of the wall, picking up the end in my hand.

It's something.

Tanis isn't around, and Thane isn't either, and right now I'm okay with that.

Right now, I can live with that.

* * *

Thank you for getting me to 100 reviews, it means a lot.

Shoutout to the two people that have the arena figured out already, because you figured it out quicker than it took for me to put it together, and that's something alright. Have fun, everyone else, figuring out what's going on in the rest of it!

Until next time.


	20. Sick And Twisted

Arena, Day Two.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

I don't know how this could get any worse.

It hit Houston first. An hour later and I was doubled over in similar agony. Somehow Houston still had the frame of mind to make sure I was okay even though he was far from that himself. I wasn't sure at what point the blood all over his hands became more mine than his own. No matter what happens he doesn't really seem concerned about anything that's happening to him; it's all me, and if I'm okay.

I'm not going to change my mind about this. He needs to focus on himself too, no matter how terrible I feel. He's still worse off than I am. I'm not sure if that's because I seem to be better fed than he is by a mile or because it got him first rather than me.

It takes me two, three hours to finally get him to lay down, tucked away in a supply closet similar to the one we first hid in. He's hardly moving at all, by the time I finally get him to sit still. He won't eat something because we're both convinced if we try it's just going to come right back up and he won't drink because he's insistent that we don't have a lot of water as is.

And he's right. We don't. But that doesn't mean our current situation isn't more pressing than finding more water down the road once we can actually stand.

I can't lie to myself. I'm terrified, right now, watching him lie next to me. I've got a sheet wrapped around my shoulders but it doesn't really seem to be helping and Houston keeps shoving the edge of it off of him, insistent that he doesn't need it.

The worst part is, he knows I'm terrified. I'm sure the entire audience does too.

"Go to sleep," Houston whispers eventually. He hasn't responded to anything I've said in the past hour, and his voice startles me. I stare down at him, curled up at my side, but he doesn't even open his eyes.

I wrap the sheet tighter around myself and slump down by his side. It's no warmer down here than it was sitting up, but I do need sleep. We hardly got any in the middle of the night, seeing as that was when it all started. At first it was confusion, but that quickly bled into horror when we realized it was getting worse, that it was spreading to me in the process.

I wait until Houston drifts back off, silent, before I close my own eyes. People are probably going to be on the move now, unless everyone else is in a similar state. They can't be doing this to everyone, though.

Where's the fun in that?

It's hard to let myself sleep, when even the littlest of sounds is enough to make me think that something's getting closer to us, but I don't have a choice. My body is exhausted and losing energy the longer I stay awake.

I don't know how far down the line we are when the boom of a cannon startles me awake.

It could have been minutes, could have been hours. I'm curled as tight as I can into myself, facing the wall to my left. My eyes don't feel quite as heavy as they did before, so it must've been a while. There's more dried blood crusted under my nose when I reach up to check. Maybe it's just the fog of sleep, but I don't think I feel as bad after being out for a bit.

The cannon shatters all of that. Only losing four people yesterday was a miracle in itself. There hasn't been so few people lost on the first day in a long, long time. Longer than I've been alive.

I should have known it wasn't destined to last.

We didn't even get to see the anthem last night, as terrible as we felt. Two of yesterday's deaths still remain a mystery to us, and now this one as well.

Houston is still behind me. I'm turning around, ready to force him up for even a few minutes, just to eat or drink something, when I realize how quiet is. Everything I was hearing before seems to have vanished. Now it's nothing but the distant, far away sound of the rain coming down again and my own breathing, still labored.

And Houston's entire front is soaked in his own blood.

When I turn, I can't move. He's in the exact same position I left him in last night. No one else would notice the differences I do, right now. His head is slumped against the floor just a little too awkwardly, his hands pale and splayed outwards, like he was reaching for something, and his chest is completely still, no rise and fall, no sign of life—

He's dead.

It was his cannon.

I scramble back as far away as I can, but there's nowhere to go. The closet is too small and my breath is coming too fast, my head spinning as I try to separate myself, and none of it's working. It was his cannon. He spent the past few hours dying next to me while I was fast asleep, none the wiser to it. Did he know it was happening? Did he ever even wake up in the first place?

"No," I choke out. The hysteria is still rising. "Please no, this didn't just happen this isn't happening, no no no."

I want to be anywhere else and I can't force my eyes away. Whatever's happening to me right now just killed him, just killed my only ally.

My only friend.

I want to simultaneously bury my head in my hands and scream for help, but no one's going to come. I struggle to my feet, a sob forcing it's way out of my chest. The sheet falls away from my shoulders and I fumble around for the backpack, tucked away somewhere behind him. Even reaching over him makes me feel sick, and I can't tell if it's legitimate or all in my own head.

I can't be here right now. I need to be anywhere but here.

But there's nowhere for me to go now.

* * *

 **Casper Tolson, 17 years, District Six Male.**

* * *

I knew things were only going to go more downhill.

Vance was bad off, but whoever is controlling this wasn't satisfied at just that. If anyone's controlling it at all. Now Farren's rapidly on the path to approaching where Vance got a few hours ago. Mostly unresponsive, not eating or drinking anything, the blood that doesn't seem to stop coming.

Farren is at least still sitting up and occasionally looking at me, although I suspect that's more for my benefit than hers. Vance has been curled into a ball for hours now, although he doesn't seem to be choking up any blood, so whatever he's doing is working. On cue, Farren cracks her eyes open and gives me a weak, bloody smile, which is at least something. Definitely doesn't make me feel any better, but I don't think there's anything that could.

If it was any other random person in this arena I don't think I'd care. But right now I'm trapped in a room with the two of them because I may be scared of this but I'm even more scared to run. There is zero chance I'm going to survive on my own, even less of a chance that I'd get through whatever they're going through alone. Vance is past that point but Farren at least seems to be taking comfort in the fact that someone's in the same boat as her, one of her hands occasionally reaching out to squeeze his shoulder, just to get a reaction out of him.

I'm waiting, with a mild amount of dread, for him to not move the next time she does it.

The worst part is, I can already feel it happening to me. Farren was trying to describe what it felt like, once we knew it was going to happen. The stomach twisting and turning, the burn in my chest. I can feel it.

It's going to happen. It's only a matter of time.

The minutes eventually trickle into an hour, and then two. The cannon somewhere in the middle of that doesn't exactly do wonders for my confidence, but it at least wakes the two of them up for long enough that I don't have to go over there myself and make sure they haven't died on me.

I just don't get it. How did Vance even get it in the first place, before either of us? We were all doing the exact same things. It doesn't make any sense that he spiraled so much quicker than we did. I haven't even started bleeding out of anywhere suspicious yet, and it's been hours upon hours since he almost fell.

"Hey," Farren says hoarsely, and I blink at her. She gestures with her hand and then pats the space next to her. There's a reason I've been sitting across the room from them, hoping stupidly that it wouldn't happen. Whatever's on my face must be giving it away, that it's about to happen any second. Maybe that's just my own paranoia.

Maybe I'm fine.

It takes me a moment, and Farren no doubt notices my hesitation, but eventually I scoop up the backpack and the sword and cross the room, dropping down by her other side. She doesn't reach out to touch me like she probably would if the situation was entirely different.

If I'm not comfortable with all of this, then I'm even less comfortable being the only one that's okay. I shouldn't be in the possession of the backpack, and the sword, like I have any idea how to best use them. Now I'm the only one who even has the frame of mind to keep a hold on them.

"You okay?" Farren asks after a moment, tipping her head back onto the wall.

"Think you should be asking yourself that question."

"I'm fine." She is most definitely not fine, if the bloody rags we found are any indication. She's had one pressed against her left ear for a while now, and I'm mildly thankful that I don't have to see it happening.

It feels like I'm sitting too close. I shouldn't be this close. Won't that only make it worse?

"Casper," Farren says quietly. She's got her eyes closed again, how typical. Doesn't even have to look to know that I'm internally freaking out right about now.

"We're going to be fine," she continues. I almost kind of wish she would reach out and squeeze my shoulder, take my hand. Anything. If it would stop my hands from shaking it would be appreciated. Is that the lack of sleep or the sickness, already creeping up? I watch Farren reach out and touch Vance's shoulder again. He gives her something that's almost but not quite a thumbs up in response, which right now is good enough. He's still breathing. We all are, by some stupid miracle.

Farren's wrong, though. I don't think this is all going to end okay, the way she wants it to.

No matter whether we come out the other side of this or not, something bad has to happen eventually.

Like I said, it's only a matter of time.

* * *

 **Zion Lancaster, 18 years, District Eleven Male.**

* * *

Early is a mystery.

I had no idea who she even really was, not even her name. Since then, since I dragged her off and we somehow got away, I don't think she's gotten any easier to handle. Not any easier to know, either.

I've tried everything, and she won't give any information up. I'm not sure if she's legitimately that unwilling to share or if she's just doing it because she's pissed about the situation. Both of us lost our allies, though. Both of us ended up in a situation we didn't think we would end up in. She's acting less like all of her plans just got ruined and more angry that she bothered making them in the first place.

It doesn't help that she's been holding onto a pen for a while now, and having it be all too easy to imagine a fourteen year old stabbing someone in the throat with it is a little off-putting.

Olympia may have been my Maren, but I think Early is all Farley.

"Anywhere you want to go?" I ask her, tired of all the silence, and she shrugs violently. I didn't know someone could shrug violently.

"You okay?" I try, and don't get a response at all. Probably a no, then. To be fair I don't think any of us in here are okay, and rightfully so.

I take a deep breath. "Can I help?"

That emits a response, finally, and she whirls on me. I never knew a pen could look so threatening.

"Could you try shutting up for two seconds?" Early suggests. And to think I had hardly been talking, before right now. "I'm not Olympia, or whatever her name was. I don't need someone to talk to me for hours on end to get by."

Olympia didn't need that either, not really, even if she did talk a lot. Olympia was stronger than anyone gave her credit for. Clearly, if she's still alive right now. Then again, if I found Early, she could've found someone else too. Maybe at this point she doesn't need me anymore, doesn't need me to find her. And I'm trying. Early can probably tell that I'm keeping an eye out for her, but she either doesn't care or doesn't have the energy to point it out.

"You're the one that left your allies," I point out, eventually. "You don't have to stay with me."

There, finally, is undisguised anger. Her face twists in a way I haven't seen it do before. Then again, I haven't seen it do much other than ignore me since I first grabbed her arm.

"My _allies_ ," she hisses. "The two still left alive, anyway, left our third ally the second she got into trouble. Ran and didn't look back. Why would I want to go after them, when they could just do the same to me? I only allied with them in the first place because they wanted _me_. I didn't need allies. I still don't. I thought maybe they could prove me wrong, and they proved me exactly right five minutes in."

It's the most I've gotten out of her thus far, and I stare. I didn't know any of that. Why would I, when she hasn't thought to tell me?

"The Nine girl, right?" I ask, even though I already know. Despite herself, Early had looked angry when she saw her face in the sky.

A feeling I'm beginning to suspect she feels quite a lot.

That could be the end of the conversation. I think to anyone else it would have been.

"Can you really blame them?" I ask her.

For once I don't think she quite knows what to say. She stares at me, for a moment, eyes wide.

"Did you not just hear me? They left her. They left me too, on the ground."

"And you heard me," I fire back. "Can you really blame them? They were probably terrified. We're all terrified, except for you apparently. If you saw it all happen why didn't you try and help earlier, before it went south? You can't blame them for running when you did the exact same thing a few seconds later. You can't act like they're the villains in this. You know they're not."

Why am _I_ angry, all of a sudden? Is it because I saw Olympia run off too and don't know how to explain it? Maybe.

Maybe the terror inside me is finally making an appearance in a way I didn't exactly envision.

"She died, and they didn't do anything. They only cared about themselves."

"Are you acting like you're any different?" I ask her, and that's it. The real question here. We both know right off the bat that she isn't. There's a reason her allies left the Nine girl and there's a reason she ran in the opposite direction, and they're both the exact same.

All they cared about in that moment was their own lives.

We can't fault anyone for that in here.

"Not everything's black and white," I say quietly, all anger deflated. I'm tired, and hungry and thirsty, and I just either want to be home or want someone to get it over with and kill me. I shouldn't be wasting my energy being something I'm not, not to a girl who didn't have anyone to tell her the truth until this very moment.

I shove my hands in my pockets and continue walking. I still want to find Olympia, even if it's a lost cause. For a few seconds, there's silence behind me. I don't expect Early to follow, not after that. I wouldn't expect anyone to.

A few seconds later, and I hear her footsteps pattering after me anyway.

Guess we're all full of surprises.

* * *

 **Parker Walden, 13 years, District Five Male.**

* * *

Rooke is at least a little more put together than yesterday.

I don't think it says all that much, but he's walking and talking and functioning, which I can handle. It's better than dragging him around like he was a broken robot and having to check over my shoulder every two and a half seconds to make sure he hadn't randomly decided to walk in another direction.

On top of that, I think we've finally found a good spot. Everything in this tower seems to be broken in some respect, which makes it easier to collect scraps of things and keep a hold of them.

It's not like I'm some master trap builder. I read a few manuals in the Capitol, looked at a few diagrams. But I've also read enough books back home that I think I can figure it out, given some time.

We don't have anything else to do. There's nothing else to fight with, besides the broken glass, and Rooke seems to be weirdly talented at finding stuff. At first he wasn't taking it seriously, probably because I never expressed any outright interest in being able to do this. Now, however, he's attempting to balance on a very wobbly table while unraveling a length of rope from one of the broken rafters hanging above our heads.

He was the one that saw it, not me. And I think it may be one of our final things.

We've got other stuff wrapped in a sheet, using it like a knapsack to carry stuff around. We're still close to starvation, but at least we'll have a line of defense. Food can come after that.

"Got it," Rooke announces. The tail end of the rope comes spiraling down and nearly whacks him square in the face, but he hops off the table and avoids it just as the rest of it coils by his feet.

Bits of broken metal and glass, some rope, some broken pieces of furniture. Sure, we'll have to operate it all by ourselves, which means risking whoever it is being very pissed off and working their way out of it to kill us, but I think we can be quick enough.

Think being the key word behind this all. I think I can figure out how to build something useful. I think we can make it work. I think someone will stumble right into it without even knowing.

There's a lot of factors going into all of this.

"Anything else?" Rooke asks. He loops the rope several times and hooks it over his shoulder. Maybe it's the way our haul's been growing over the past few hours, but he seems brighter again. I inspect the sheet full of our belongings again. I can't think of anything else. Then again, there's not much else here. What we have will have to be able to stop someone long enough for one of us to be able to kill them.

Long enough for me to kill them. Rooke may seem brighter but I'm still not exactly sure on that front.

We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

"We're good. Let's go."

We have a room to stay in, where the door is still stable enough that someone will hopefully not see it coming from the other side. Hopefully the Gamemakers will be nice enough not to chase us out of it, especially if we put this much work into it. It's just down the hallway, and Rooke hauls our makeshift bag back to it and through the doorway, dropping the contents onto the floor.

It doesn't look like much. To almost everyone else in the arena, it probably doesn't look like anything at all.

To me, this is a gold mine.

"What now?" Rooke is looking at it all, but now he turns to look down at me. This will be enough to keep the two of us focused, on something other than the death and our other allies, long gone. It's only us now.

"Now we get to work."

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

I think I've finally stopped throwing up my own blood.

I'm also pretty solid in the standing department now too, despite what my head's telling me. Everything spins when I move but my legs don't seem to be wobbling at all. It seems it'll still be a few hours before that stops, at least.

I also feel like I've been hit by a semi-truck and then run over, repeatedly. All of my allies are who knows where. The only water I tried to drink I ended up choking back up, which just made everything worse, and even looking at the crackers in my bag kinda makes me want to throw up again. Considering how many times I've done that in the past approximate twenty-four hours, if I never throw up again in my life, it'll still be too soon.

The backpack, when I finally get it situated on my shoulders, feels like it weights about a hundred pounds. It's either take it and move or sit in the same corner I've been in for the past day, stained with my own blood and bile, and sue me for not wanting to sit in the middle of that any longer than necessary.

Something like this is not going to break me.

It can't be that great of an idea, to start moving around when someone half my size could probably take me out right now, but I expected to get murdered the entire time I was lying there, completely defenseless. It didn't happen then, so maybe I'll get lucky this time too.

I'm not being so optimistic about it, though.

I'm not moving for five minutes when I hear something. Of course.

My priority the past while has been mostly revolving around not getting killed by the literal plague, not with finding a weapon. I don't have anything except for my bare hands, which probably aren't the most reliable right now.

Apparently I _shouldn't_ have moved. Jesus, can anyone get a win in here?

I don't really get too much time to think about it, though, because Rory comes stumbling out of the stairwell.

If I had been any closer he probably would have bowled me over. He's doubled over, half clutching at the door to keep himself upright. It takes him a few seconds to realize that there's a set of legs other than his own in front of him and _that's_ when he panics.

It's either back down the stairs, into the wall, or into me. There's really nowhere else for him to go.

"Wow, you too," is all I can manage to say. Why am I even surprised?

He settles for the wall, and finally looks right at me. He doesn't really seem to get that I said anything at all. Mostly he looks torn between panic and confusion, but the longer I just stand there the quicker I see it fade away. I really, really don't have the energy to kill him right now.

And whether I like it or not, I know I'd feel too bad about even considering it anyway.

God, am I screwed.

"Think I passed out on the stairs," he manages, eventually. I barely even hear him.

"Not a great place to pass out."

He nods, the only agreement I'm going to get, and then squeezes his eyes shut. Clearly he's right in the middle of how I was a few hours ago, the worst of it. I'm surprised he's even upright. I tried it, only once, and almost passed out. His nose starts dripping blood again, right in front of me, and his head thunks against the wall.

I really am screwed.

I reach out a hand for him and he backpedals quicker than I would have expected him to, holding out his own hand.

"You— you probably shouldn't touch me. Bad idea."

"Did you not hear me? Already went through the worst of it. Unless you can give it to me again, in which case you are a _dead man_ , it's fine."

Yeah, he definitely didn't hear me. His eyebrows furrow in confusion yet again, eyes unfocused.

"Is any of this real?" Rory asks quietly.

"Unfortunately."

"Oh," he manages. "That's nice."

And then he promptly passes out.

I hardly even manage to catch him. Maybe I should've seen his eyes rolling back in his head sooner, but I was too busy wondering what the hell I was even doing. I said I wasn't being allies with him, that he probably wasn't good enough, but he's here now, isn't he? Completely dead weight in my arms, I may add, and still bleeding profusely from the nose. This is _exactly_ why I shouldn't have moved.

I could drop him on the floor and leave him here. I really could.

No, I can't.

I sigh, and look down at him. "You literally suck."

He doesn't respond. Shocker.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

I really didn't think that getting a new ally would result in me wandering around alone anyway.

Blair's been out cold in a corner for hours now, and it's either sit there and stare, waiting for him to wake up, or take a look around. There's only so many things I can kick over, though, before I either find something useful or a rat gets spectacularly pissed off at me for destroying it's hiding spot and starts biting me.

At the rate we're going, it's going to be the latter.

I've got the backpack, at least, because Blair could only use it as a pillow and bleed all over it for so long. I told him I was going to look around, but I don't think he was really properly awake to hear me.

"Find anything useful?"

Or not?

"I thought you were supposed to be laying down?" I point out. Blair's standing in the doorway. Slumped in the doorway, really. This has to be karma for him saying that I looked like shit yesterday, because god does he look awful now. The burn of the rain went away rather quick, though, whereas Blair has been going through this for hours now.

"You can't tell me what to do. I already feel like garbage, I don't need you lecturing me too."

"Funny. I didn't know garbage could walk around."

"Surprise," he says, but he sounds tired. I sigh and abandon the drawers I had been digging through. Nothing in there anyway but old, yellowed paper and a few lone spiders.

"You seriously still feel fine?" Blair asks, as I cross the room and grab him, ready to herd him back to our little corner. I don't even really know how to answer that. Whatever happened to him, it happened pretty abruptly. I thought for a long while that it was happening to me too, but the longer we go on with nothing happening the more convinced I am that I was imagining it.

Things like this fuck with people, and not just physically.

"Don't jinx it," I say. He's mostly leaning on me now, as he's been doing a lot. "It's like you planned this. You knew it was going to happen so you made me come with you so I could drag you around."

"That's totally it," he responds, as I force him back onto the ground. "All my secrets. They're out now."

I sit back down next to him this time, instead of wandering off again. Though he'll never admit it, I think this has been fucking with him worse than he'd like it to be. Him seeing things with me here to tell him it wasn't real was bad enough. For all I know it was happening while I was gone too and he only came looking for me because he didn't want to be alone.

"Why would you bother picking me?" I ask. "I'm not a doctor. Should've grabbed Shirin or something."

"Ew," Blair says dramatically, as he flops back down and covers his face with his arm. "You're close enough, aren't you? We'll just get you a plague mask. Sponsors, get on it."

"I am not wearing a weird bird mask," I insist, but the thought seems to amuse him. Maybe he's coming out of it. I hope so. That means I can resume hitting him when he says stupid shit and not feel bad about it, like I currently do.

"Go to sleep," I insist, for what feels like the sixtieth time. It's like talking to an infant. He never listens.

Blair turns this time, though, and rests his head just enough against my leg that if I move his head will hit the floor, grumbling under his breath the entire time about not getting enough sleep. He's been asleep this entire time. How much more does he actually need?

He falls asleep in about two seconds flat, effectively trapping me here for the time being.

I might as well close my own eyes, too.

I'm not going to get much sleep with him around, apparently.

* * *

Now resorting to updating while drunk because this website couldn't get it's shit together long enough during the day for me to do it. Sorry for the delay. But hey, still Saturday! I hope everyone who still gets a break this week is either already enjoying it or will enjoy it in the coming week. That week off was the greatest in high school.

I'm really terrible at hurrying things along, apparently. Sue me for liking semi-long Games, I like drawing it out. And giving people the plague, apparently.

Until next time.


	21. Fear The Reaper

Arena, Night Two.

* * *

 **Anya Preising, 15 years, District Two Female.**

* * *

I don't know how this could get any worse.

If you've ever wondered what it would look like if someone piled every stupid, terrible thing on you at once, then I have to look like a pretty good representation of the actual thing.

The paranoia is bad, right now. I don't know whether that's more the sickness or the thirst, at this point. If I don't find water soon I'll be dead anyway. Maybe that's why I keep turning around, wondering if something is there. Wondering if the shadows at the back of the hallway are just that, shadows, or if they're just waiting to form into something more concrete.

And to top it all off, it appears I've also found the literal representation of the creepy basement.

The red tower's been unsettling from the get go, but I haven't found anything stunningly useful. I was in the process of heading back to the ground when I see it. Maybe there had to be something on the ground that we had missed. There had to be, didn't there?

I see the untouched doorway before I even get outside.

It's not far from the entrance to the building. It's darker than the rest, closer to black then red, and everything down that way is still untouched. Cobwebs still cling to the door handle, and when I wrap my hand around it and wrench it open, the stairs descend into the darkness instead of headed upwards like I so expected them to. It's pitch black, my flashlight hardly doing anything at all to cut through the wide swath of darkness that it appears the stairs have found a home in.

This could either be the worst decision of my life, or the best. They wouldn't bother making something terrifying this hidden, would they?

Maybe. With this arena I'd almost bet on whatever's down there being terrible, just to top it all off.

But I'm never going to find out if I don't actually go down there.

I leave the door open a crack, just in case, and begin my descent down the stairs. The sliver of light from the open door, red as it may be, is oddly reassuring. Every other stair creaks beneath my feet as I lean against the wall just a little too heavily, praying that I don't end up falling down them. I'm not in any condition to fall down the stairs, just like I'm not in any condition to have to survive whatever's down there if I _do_ fall down the stairs.

I don't think I'm in any condition to fight whatever's down there, period.

But something's gotta give, here, and I'm not about to let it be me.

My feet land on solid ground at the exact second the door, far above me now, creaks shut.

I don't even know what I think could be down here. Not Rory, certainly. My brain isn't in the greatest state at the current moment, but even I have to admit that there's no way in hell he'd be coming down here alone. As if on cue, one of the stairs above me creaks, and that's enough to send me running.

Jogging, close enough. Any faster and I'm almost certain I'll be two seconds away from passing out. The floor is just as dark in the stairs, but there's nothing for me to trip over. I keep expecting to run into something, to have something appear from out of nowhere and kill me in two seconds flat. Right now that's about the least surprising thing they could do.

One of the stairs creaks again. Am I imagining that? I hardly even know which direction they're in, now. I'll be lucky to ever find my way out of the basement.

Another creak. There's no way I'm imagining it. I stared downwards for a solid thirty seconds and heard absolutely nothing, and you're telling me that now that I'm down here the stairs are making noise?

It's that, or someone followed me down here.

Maybe the door shutting wasn't coincidence at all, wasn't outside interference. Maybe there's someone stalking me through the darkness right now, just waiting for the right moment.

One more creak, and then they stop entirely. If someone else is down here, they must have finally hit the bottom.

I click the flashlight off.

I can't tell if it's my own anxiety, but I'm getting more and more convinced by the second that someone else is down here with me. The flashlight is probably the exact reason they found me in the first place; I wasn't exactly being subtle about using it. If they had any sort of large advantage they would have attacked me by now. Probably would have. That means I have the following advantages; I know they're down here, whereas they might not think I know, and I have a hold on at least something.

Neither of those are stellar, but they're something.

I start walking, hesitantly, keeping my eyes trained on the direction I think the stairs are. Now that it's pitch black I probably won't even see them coming. I hold out my left hand, feeling for the nearest wall to use as guidance, and keep the flashlight in my right. It may not be any use in providing light right now, but I have absolutely zero issue clubbing something to death with it, if that's what it comes down to.

There's something in that direction, real or not. I can tell.

The thing is, the more the feeling of being stalked intensifies, so does the one that's telling me that there is something down here. Something worthwhile.

And whatever it is, I'm going to find it first.

* * *

 **Early Sinnett, 14 years, District Three Female.**

* * *

"I'm going to sleep."

After how Zion went off on me earlier, I'm not about to tempt fate again and tell him not to. For all the gentle giant he acts like he is, it would take a grand total of a second and a half for him to pop my head off of my shoulders like I was a doll if he decided to get angry and snap on me.

An image I'm really not a fan of, if I'm being honest.

I don't think he did it out of any malicious intent. If he even possessed any of that he would have killed me that first moment on the stairs instead of taking me with him. Realistically, pen be damned, he could have killed me in any single second since then.

Despite his words, though, Zion's still looking at me.

"What?" I ask finally.

"Are you going to sleep too, or?"

"Someone has to keep watch." Is he not aware that I did that most of the first night, too? He hasn't exactly seemed scared of the fact that he could get murdered in his sleep, if he wasn't careful. That _I_ could murder him in his sleep. He looks a little puzzled, like he's wondering why that realization hadn't hit him sooner. I think he's only sleeping so easy because he's accepted it, like he said on stage.

"I could keep watch for a few hours, if you want," he offers, and I shake my head. What is he going to do, if he sees someone? Hope he's quick enough to wake me up? It's not like he's going to attempt murder on whoever he sees.

"I'll do it. Go to sleep."

He stares at me for a heartbeat longer before he turns over, facing the opposite wall. I draw my knees up to my chest. I do probably need to get more sleep then I'm currently getting, but that can wait. Only five people have died. Everyone needs to hurry it up and start dying or we're going to have an issue here, for both me _and_ Zion.

The pen in my hand does not feel nearly as reassuring as it should be.

"I'm sorry about earlier," Zion says quietly, a rough twenty minutes later. I nearly jump. He fell asleep so quickly on me last night that I had expected the same of him now. I don't say anything. There's nothing to say.

"When I snapped at you," he explains, like I need an explanation in the first place. "I shouldn't have."

It's almost like he's expecting me to forgive him, that less than twelve hours afterwards the guilt is hitting him too hard for him to be able to go to sleep soundly. There's nothing to forgive, though. He didn't say a single thing that wound up being untrue. I'm selfish and angry but if I'm angry at Rooke and Parker than I need to be angry at myself, too.

They may have left me behind, but at the end of the day Laurel died because of all of us.

The silence stretches on, very thin, between the both of us. It's so long that eventually Zion does drop off into sleep without me ever saying anything back. I contemplate getting up and walking away a rough half dozen times before I realize that I never even moved when I thought it. Would I really feel bad about leaving him here, asleep and unaware?

I don't really think I'd feel bad. He's just one of the only ones who's said anything worth hearing, since we got here.

Zion would hate being here alone. That I know without a doubt. There's a reason he attached himself to Olympia so early on, and it wasn't because he thought he would survive with her. I know a lot of things he doesn't. I saw Olympia's face, when he was doing his interview. I saw everything crumble apart before her eyes, saw what was probably the exact moment she made her decision to run away from him the first day.

Those words almost spilled out, too, when he yelled at me earlier. Maybe I should have said them.

He deserves to know that she abandoned him.

I think that realization would kill him quicker than anything else, though.

Are we all just going to keep making shitty, awful decisions that end up being worthwhile? Olympia may have left him but she's still alive, somewhere out there. Leaving Laurel ended up with me here, with an ally who at least has some form of food, even if I'm never going to be able to look at a cracker again in my life. Rooke and Parker are still alive, too.

"It's fine," I say, what has to be an hour, two hours later. Of course Zion doesn't say anything in response, but I think that's exactly why I waited.

I don't want to watch the hope come to life on his face, like that means anything at all. Not everything is black and white, but at least one of us in this room will wind up dead, some way or another.

If I end up being the one that lives, well...

I don't want to feel bad about it.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

Whatever's going on in this place, at least I know that we're making some progress.

I have zero idea how Parker's managed to map all of this out in his head, but it's something alright. It looks simple enough, right now, but there's still the fact that both of us have to be present for it to really work.

Something comes swinging down from the ceiling, easy enough, when someone walks into the room. Whether it hits them or not doesn't really matter. It's so close to the opposite wall that when they hit it trying to get out of the way the ropes we've lashed to it will trap them, provided me or Parker are on the opposite end, pulling them tight. I don't care if it's an ankle or if it's an arm. Just as long as we can stop them from moving.

I've already volunteered to do that, to keep them still. Let Parker walk over and actually kill them.

There's a few ways, already, that I can see this going wrong. If more than one person walks in here, we'll have one trapped, but one more to deal with, provided they don't run. We're also hoping that whoever it is doesn't have any weapons to cut themselves free with, at least not in their hand. The last thing I want is someone nailing me with a throwing knife, even trapped against the wall, because I'm just standing there hoping they won't actually do it.

The thing hanging from the ceiling looks more dangerous than I think it really will be. I'd managed to break a few chair legs up into shards but clustered and tied together they look like they could do actual damage, if whoever makes the mistake of walking in here doesn't manage to get out of the way in time. That would be the ideal scenario. Someone walks in, it smashes into them hard enough to kill them.

As screwed up as that may be, I think that would make me feel better than watching Parker outright kill them.

I pass Parker one more length of rope that he ties into the mess of them that already exists on the opposite wall. He sticks his hand in one of the gaps and I pull on the rope we still have free. It tightens around his wrist and when he gives an experimental tug it doesn't budge.

Who knows, maybe this will actually go the way we want it to.

"Looks good," Parker concedes. "Now to just not accidentally trip it."

I don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that he's mostly referring to me when he says it. I plan on taking the widest berth possible when going anywhere near the separate parts of this thing.

I take it back. The last thing I want is to accidentally get my head bashed in by the trap we just spent hours working on.

Parker continues inspecting everything we've done, for the tenth time now. We've come up empty for a while now.

It looks like this is actually going to work.

He's got his hand in the ropes when I hear something out in the hallway.

It almost sounds like footsteps, impossibly light. I wave my hands around frantically until Parker notices and turns around towards me, confused. I press a finger over my lips and he looks towards the doorway, understanding finally crossing his face. He gestures at the rope and I readjust my grip on it. This is what we planned for, other people to find us first.

I just didn't think it would be this soon.

Parker creeps closer and closer to the doorway. He'll have to be close, to make sure that thing swings down and makes contact. It's unnerving to watch him get that close to whoever it is, a complete and total lack of concern in his eyes.

I'm so concerned right now it feels like my eyes are going to fall out of my head.

Parker's behind the door, now, chancing a glance through the smallest crack.

It still doesn't sound like footsteps. It's too quiet, _too_ cautious, almost. I never thought you could be too cautious walking around in here.

I get maybe ten seconds to wonder what the hell I'm actually hearing before Parker comes tearing back towards me.

The rope falls out of my hands as he literally crashes into me and then pushes me to the ground. Without a word he's crawling head-first into the vent near the floor. He had managed to get the cover off, earlier, insisting that we could find a way to use it, but he completely ignores it now as he disappears into the wall, and then reaches back out for me.

Whatever's out there is probably not a person, I realize, as I nearly slam my head into the wall.

"Cover, get the cover," Parker urges, before I'm even halfway in. It's too small in here but I wiggle around, feeling way too much like a pretzel and grab the cover off the floor. There's no way to screw it shut again, not from the inside, but I hold it over the opening in the wall and pray, for whatever reason. I don't know what's out there. I don't know what I'm hiding from.

Whatever it is can't be good.

Behind me, Parker's half-sitting on my legs and then reaches forward and grabs one of my arms, steadying it. The cover goes still, hovering just above the wall, just as it walks into the room.

 _It_ is the only proper way to describe it.

We had seen the shadows before now, but nothing like this. It looks like every shadow in this place has converged into one giant mass, simultaneously walking and hovering above the floor. The shadows had been flimsy, disappearing at every second, but this looks solid and real, covered in rags almost like our own outfits, a hood drawn over it's head.

In it's right hand, as black and shadowy as the rest of it, is a scythe longer than I am tall.

You're kidding me.

It seems to drift around the room, like it's inspecting our handiwork. I keep waiting for it to reach out and tear something down, make us start over. It never turns towards us, hiding in the vents. I don't even know if it has eyes, or a face at all. Somehow the fact that it's moving around with such ease is even more terrifying, with that realization.

I chance a glance over my shoulder and Parker looks _worried_. Not terrified, because I've never in my right mind seen him terrified and don't think I ever will, but that's concern in his eyes and it's not reassuring in the slightest.

Not that the literal grim reaper standing the room is either, but.

One concern at a time here.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

We're back out on the bridge when I see it.

I'll be honest, it's not so bad being out here when it's not raining. The red light is kind of hard on the eyes, but after a while you get used to it.

Or at least I think you do. At first when I look a few floors up and see the shadow of something, through one of the balcony doors, I think I'm imagining it. It wouldn't exactly be a stretch to imagine something like that in here.

I stare, in silence, for a while. It's moving around, whatever it is.

Shirin's been feigning sleep against the side of the Cornucopia for a while now, but the next time he opens his eyes he follows my gaze quickly, just watching. His expression never changes, not that I expect it to.

What the hell is it?

Isi's been absentmindedly scuffing her foot through the bloodstain the Nine girl left behind for a while now. I think her urge to kill has someone has been satiated for now, or else we'd still be moving. At least it didn't take her long to kill the Twelve guy. A little longer than I would've wanted it to be but I sure wasn't about to step in and intervene.

He hadn't really looked scared. Shocked, mostly.

I've already gotten so used to Isi and what she does that shock really isn't a word in my vocabulary, when it comes to her.

Isi's boot finally makes contact with a stray piece of glass, and it skitters across the bridge until it comes to a stop not a foot from my leg. She follows it with her eyes, only then realizing that Shirin and I are staring off in the same direction.

She looks up, and her eyes narrow. "The fuck is that?"

I shrug, and she moves a little closer, between the two of us. Like that's going to help. It doesn't get any clearer no matter what angle you look at it from. Isi tilts her head, though, like maybe she's getting closer to understanding it then we are. Her hand tightens around a knife.

"I'm going to go look."

"Not a good idea," is all Shirin says, but Isi acts like she doesn't even hear him. Not exactly a surprise.

The shadow, whatever it is, disappears. One second it's there and the next it completely dissipates off the edge of the balcony, a lot like the shadows we were using to find the Twelve kid. It's big, though. Bigger than any of us by a mile, and before it faded away it almost looked like it was holding a weapon. Isi pauses halfway down the bridge, peering up towards the balcony.

"Just stay here," Shirin says. Isi glowers at the spot where it had been.

"You don't know what it could do to you," I point out. Just because the shadows were helping her one night doesn't mean they'll be so kind the next, and I don't imagine they will be.

"I _know_ that it can't do anything if I never get within fifty feet of it."

Fair enough. That still doesn't mean we should push our luck when we're already down half our alliance to find out.

I do wonder what it can do, though. I watched Isi slit someone's throat last night and none of us blinked, but this made us all take a step back and watch. I think the unknown is more terrifying than the certainty of a knife coming down towards you.

At least it is right now. Shirin closes his eyes again, apparently no longer putting up with the spectacle. After a while Isi comes back and sits down just within the edge of the Cornucopia, still staring at it's last known location. I'm still looking that way too, waiting. For what I'm not exactly sure. Isi crosses her arms over her chest and looks at me.

"What do you think it is?"

She doesn't know, then. Her not knowing something for once is kind of nice.

"Nothing good."

Though I think that was obvious from the get-go.

* * *

 **Rodrik Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

One of the main issues I seem to have lately with waking up is I don't remember passing out in the first place.

It's like the stairs all over again. One second I had been so convinced I was going to get to the top of them and the next one of the edges of the stairs was digging into my cheek. That's a lot like what's happening right now. I know I got up. I _remember_ getting up, and getting out of the stairwell.

And I remember Celia?

That's about the time I become aware of a very real, very much alive presence just behind me.

Going from laying down to sitting up in a split second probably isn't my greatest idea, but it's about all I've got. My head's going to punish me for it later too, judging by how blurry my vision goes the second I move, but anything that doesn't involve blood at this point is good.

Someone's got a hold of my arm before I'm even fully upright, so maybe I didn't move as fast as I gave myself credit for. Not just someone, though. Celia. I knew I couldn't have fully imagined that. She's staring at me right now, looking a little alarmed, though that's probably due to the fact that I just went from unconscious to looking I was going to attempt to hit her with nothing but my bare hands really quickly.

My head's already starting to punish me for it.

"Don't pass out again," Celia instructs, and it would be a lot easier to do if it didn't feel like my brain was going to leak out of my ears any second.

Eventually she all but shoves me back down to the ground, even though it's gentler than I expected it to be.

At least it's confirmation, then. I definitely passed out.

"You're not bleeding anymore. You might be out of the worst of it."

"Doesn't feel like it," I manage, though she might have a point. It's bad but not nearly having a breakdown in a stairwell bad. I crack open one of my eyes and glance up at her. To be honest, she doesn't look much better off. She was talking to me, before. I very vaguely remember that, but not anything that she actually said. I carefully roll over onto my back, grimacing up at the ceiling.

I have no idea where we are. We're both shoved into a corner of a room that seems to be otherwise packed to the brim with broken and odd furniture. There's enough space that I can stretch my legs out, but that's about it.

"What happened?" I ask. No matter what I try to think of, nothing comes back to me.

"I stopped your head from splitting open on the floor like a watermelon," she explains. "Dragged you in here. Figured the more furniture I moved in here the harder it would be for someone to get over here."

"Don't ever become an interior designer."

"Shut up."

She nudges a water bottle against my fingers, and I blink. Have I really not seen any water besides the rain since the bloodbath?

"Go easy on that. It's the only one we've got left. I may or may not have wasted most of the first one."

I don't need it, then. I can go a little bit longer without water, at least until it's discovered that there's more out there, somewhere. Still, there's something about holding the bottle that's a little bit reassuring.

"Why, though?" I question, and Celia glances down at me again. Shrugs.

That's not enough of an answer. She told me that this wouldn't work out, that we wouldn't end up as allies. It was hard to accept, but I had to. At least most of us had someone. I had Anya, and she had Dimara and Oeshe, and that just had to be good enough.

There's no one else here now, though.

"You never found Anya," she guesses, instead of really answering.

The thing is, I saw her get separated from Dimara and Oeshe. But I always thought that she would've ended back up with at least one of them. If you knew anything about them it's that they wouldn't quit.

"You never found them either?"

She doesn't answer that one, but I don't know why this time. She looks troubled, like she doesn't really know how to answer that. It's not a look I've ever seen from here before, not one that I particularly like either.

"Long story," she settles on finally, and I figure that's gonna have to be good enough. Whatever happened it doesn't really look like she's in the mood to talk about it. Clearly, for her to call us a _we_ and for her to look so terrible, she has to have gone through some things. Probably the same things I did. I know I don't ever want to re-live any of the worst parts of it.

I let my head thunk back onto the floor, still holding onto the water bottle.

"You're just asking for a concussion," Celia says, but she cracks a smile.

I did not envision ending up here, with her, in the state that I'm in. It's not the greatest, but it's also far from the worst case scenario. Someone else could've found me, could've killed me. It's not like I would have been able to fight back.

"Surprised you didn't kill me," I say quietly. I really am. I didn't think she really cared.

Does she?

"Yeah," she agrees wryly. "Me too."

I can still feel blood crusted under my nose, all over my neck, down the front of my shirt, and yet I still manage a smile. It's no better than her own and she reaches down and pinches me in the arm. I think if I had been in any state than the one I'm currently in, the hit would have been a lot worse. So maybe that's the only sign I'm going to get, that maybe she really does care.

It's certainly better than anything I ever expected to get.

"I'll shut up now," I inform her. She shakes her head and leans back against the wall, and I think it's against her better judgement, but she looks amused.

"It's about time."

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

It only makes sense that Casper goes downhill right around the time I start feeling like myself again.

Apparently there's a rule in place; only one of us can feel like a semi-normal human being at a time. I can stand up, even if walking hasn't gone so great thus far, but the other two? Not so much. It doesn't help that Casper's also panicking, which I didn't think was possible with how terrible it made you feel. I thought every other basic human function and emotion shut down in the face of pain. Not with him, though.

Farren's attempts to get him to calm down are nothing but futile. She's not really in a place to be doing it anyway, fighting unconsciousness with everything she has.

That means I have to try.

Problem is, Casper doesn't exactly know how to listen. I think what he's feeling has amplified every negative emotion in him. He can be so calm and relaxed sometimes and now he's anything but. It's only making the blood come faster.

He's moving around so fast it's making me dizzy. Again, how he's moving right now I'm not exactly sure. He's unsteady on his feet, constantly having to catch himself against the nearest wall, but it never seems to deter him.

Something's gotta give. The question is if it will be his mind or body first.

Farren looks up from her knees, bleary-eyed, and gives me a helpless look. I could handle comforting her, when I realized I was coming out of it. But both of them is hard, especially when they're at such different ends of the spectrum.

"It's gotta end eventually," Casper says for the fourth time.

"Just sit down," I say. "You'll come out of it, it'll just take some time."

We have proof now. I came out of it, even when it felt like it was going to kill me at times. The both of them will get through the other side of it too. Maybe that's naive, to think it'll happen that easy, but right now it's all I've got.

"Casp—"

"Farren, stop for a second," Casper orders. He sways again and I'm ready to catch him before he puts a hand against the wall, stopping himself. "Why the fuck is this happening to us? This shouldn't be happening to us."

None of this should be happening to us, but I don't think he really cares about that right now.

"Why did you have to get sick?" Casper asks, and now he's looking at _me_. Great. "If you hadn't none of us would. It feels like I'm being torn apart from the inside, you know that? Did you do it on purpose?"

Is he serious right now? Bleary-eyed as she is Farren is looking up at him now, disbelief clear across her face.

"Casper, stop," she insists weakly. "He wouldn't— that's not why this is happening."

"You don't know that, though. What if he's just trying to get rid of us?"

Yeah, the paranoia is at an all time high, and that's putting it as nicely as possible. Does he really think that I'd have willingly gone through the past day just in an attempt to kill both of them? I wouldn't wish what's happened to us so far on anyone. Besides, if I'm getting better, there's no reason the two of them won't. Maybe someone weaker, maybe someone smaller...

But we're not.

"Like I said, just sit down," I suggest. "Believe me, you'll feel a hell of a lot better when you're not standing up."

Not really the truth, if I'm being honest, but I'll do anything right now to get him to calm down. If he would just go under for a few hours, get some time away from the constant pain, then maybe it would be better.

Or maybe not.

He leans forward, looking me dead in the eye, and it's kind of unnerving. He looks crazed. Farren looked like that not long ago, maybe a lesser version, but she never went off on me. She _had_ nearly started crying at one point, but tears I can handle.

I cannot handle this.

"Casper," I start.

"Shut up." There's maybe two inches between us, three at most. It's pretty much taking everything in me not to freak out back, because there's no way in hell that's going to help. If anything that'll just set him off more, and we don't need that. I decide to shut my mouth.

"I think I fucked up," he announces, like there's sudden clarity overwhelming him. "Why did I think you'd be a good idea? We're here right now because of _you_. All because I thought it would be a good idea for her to have someone else to turn to."

I still have the scalpel, in one of my pockets. This is the first time I'm remembering it.

He leans in just a fraction more and I know why I'm remembering it.

Farren's a little bit more alert, now. She puts one hand on the wall and reaches out for me with the other. Trying to stand up. I reach my arm back for her and that's when Casper moves, grabbing my arm before she can even get there and wrenching it away. His nails are creating dents in my skin and Farren starts, looking between us, wide-eyed.

"You need to stop," he says, voice very, very calm and everything inside me is the complete opposite.

"Casper," Farren pleads. His nails are actually starting to hurt. I can see it in his eyes, the terror and the pain and the confusion. I'm trying to tell myself to calm down, because this isn't him. His brain is half his own right now, and I know how that felt.

If he even remembers any of this in the morning it'll be a miracle.

"You're okay," I breathe. He stares at me all the while. "You are. I swear."

He doesn't believe me.

I don't even think he realizes he's holding onto me, or maybe he thinks it's the opposite. He tries to twist my arm, or maybe he's trying to figure out how to make himself let go. When he moves his shoulder digs into my chest, shoving me back against the wall, and I don't even think.

That's the fatal flaw.

My hand's in my pocket and ripping the scalpel out before I even register it. And I don't know what I'm doing, all I know is that I just want him preferably unconscious and not holding onto me like he's trying to figure out how to make me permanently go away. The scalpel slides through the fabric and skin across the top of his arm, and then his shoulder, and I'm watching him recoil away at the sight of his own blood but my hand doesn't stop. Even though I know I need to stop the momentum is too much.

The pointed end of the scalpel sinks directly into his throat.

Distantly, like I'm somewhere else entirely, I hear Farren screaming.

Casper pulls himself away at the same time I feel my own hand pulling back, away from him. His own hands fly up to his neck and he rips it the last bit out, through another two or three inches of his skin, and even through the force of it my hand is still locked around it, like I can't let go. Blood goes spraying between the two of us, all over his neck and my face, and even that does not feel anything close to real.

The only thing that feels anything close to real is Farren, still screaming, as Casper collapses to the ground, blood spewing from his neck when he lands at my feet.

I take off.

That's the only thing my brain had the frame of mind to tell me. Just move. Just be anywhere but here right now. The backpack and the sword and even Casper, still lying bloodied on the ground, are the least of my concerns.

I slam into the stairwell door down the hallway, only just managing to open it, when the cannon goes off.

It feels like I can hardly breathe. I said walking was difficult but my legs are holding beneath me right now, as I get one floor down and then two. Even as I'm moving I can feel them ready to give up on me any second, though. My brain is getting foggier with every step I take, my vision tilting dangerously as I finally take my chances the third floor down, stumbling out into the hallway.

I hardly even get into the closest room. It doesn't have a door anyway, and there's hardly anything in it. Nothing but a chair, knocked over three feet to my left and two metal shelves, at awkward angles coming out from the wall.

One of my legs gives out, and then the other, and as I go down I see the jutting edge of the metal shelf, just before my head collides with it.

* * *

Accidental panic murder is my kink.

That was a joke (mostly). Also please never let me say that again.

I reckon from this point on it's mostly downhill, although you could argue we hit the downhill point as soon as I posted the bloodbath. Call this the extra downhill, then, because I don't think there's anything better to call it. Another unrelated question - I'm getting mildly tempted to start doing polls again about random stuff, so if you're into that or up for answering, let me know, or even give me some ideas about what kinda things I should ask.

Until next time.


	22. Shadow Preachers

Arena, Early Morning, Day Three.

* * *

 **Farren Laboy, 17 years, District Six Female.**

* * *

For a little while there I'm convinced that if I close my eyes time will wind backwards.

This is just some sort of sickness-induced hallucination, nothing more than a figment of my imagination. When I next look Casper's body will not be lying five feet ahead of me because there's no way to get rid of it, and Vance will not have vanished into thin air two seconds afterwards.

I won't be here, with two allies one second and completely alone the next.

Something has to turn the clock back.

When I finally manage to crack my eyes back open, Casper's still lying there. The worst part is his eyes are wide open, one of his hands desperately clutching at the bloody tear in his throat. It's all over the floor underneath him, soaked through the layers of his clothing. By some form of a miracle it stopped just before it hit my boots, although I'm shoved as far into the corner as I can possibly get.

I have no idea what just happened, or where Vance is, or what I'm supposed to do now.

I heard the anthem, too, not long after it happened. Knew I'd see his face in the sky and couldn't make myself move no matter what I tried. My body already wants to give up on me anyway. It's like I can't tear my eyes away. There's too much blood everywhere, footprints of it down the hallway and fading fast, from where Vance's boots must have touched it.

Where did he go?

I don't know who panicked more, in this situation. Casper abandoned all rationale a long time ago, and I don't know if it was me or Vance who properly freaked out first. It wasn't me that put the scalpel where it landed but what the hell would I have done, if it had gone further than that? If Casper has refused to stop, then someone would have had to do something eventually.

Vance just got to that point first.

My eyes land on the sword, just out of reach of my outstretched hand. I lean forward and grab it, hugging it close to my side. There's no way it should be anywhere near comforting.

It's the only thing that is, right now.

Part of me is still hoping that Vance will come back, and the other half doesn't want to see him ever again. Who's to say that if I had freaked out in the same way that he wouldn't have ended up killing me too, eventually? God, I sound like Casper did, paranoid out of my mind and just waiting for something to terrible to happen. He called it, though. He knew something had to give eventually.

He was right this whole time.

My arms, weak as they are, can hardly even hold onto the backpack when I finally struggle to my feet, taking careful, narrow steps around his body. I don't like thinking of him as a body, as something other than the careless boy always in the back row in one of my classes.

I don't know how to think of him as a body.

The bloody footprints don't even continue all the way down the hallway, eventually fading off. Nothing to follow. For all I know Vance made it all the way to the ground. For all I know, he never stopped running and he's already a world away from me. But it's like I thought - do I even really want him around right now? Or ever? It's hard to think of him like that too, as someone who murdered someone else in two seconds flat and then ran from it. Maybe it's because, like me, Vance didn't really know how to look at it either.

I should do something. Move his body at least, to somewhere with open air so the hovercraft can take it. He doesn't have much back home but he doesn't deserve to lie here for however many days it takes for this to all be over.

And I feel like a terrible person, but I can't make myself lean down and do it.

The second I even get close I feel the lump rising heavy in my throat, feel my eyes burn. If I start crying right now I don't think I'll be able to stop. I already feel terrible enough as is.

"I'm sorry," I tell him, voice thick. Waiting for his voice to respond back hits me harder than I ever thought it would. There's nothing but the cold air and the red sky and there's not even someone else here now, to tell me that everything will be okay. The thing is, this was all Casper too. He was the one that wanted me to talk to Vance in the first place, the one that encouraged the whole idea. And, at the end of the day, it was him that finally cracked. I know Vance didn't want to do it, I saw it in his eyes even as he turned tail and ran for it.

It doesn't matter now, though.

We still all ended up here anyway.

Or rather, anywhere but here.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

I heard the crash down the hallway a long while ago.

The length of time it's been since then could be anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. I haven't done much since leaving the closet but hide and hope that no one would find me, because there's nothing else I could do. I've stopped bleeding but that's about all I've got going for me at the current moment.

I had been in the middle of the hallway when I heard it, but ducked into the nearest room. Which is also conveniently where I've been since it happened, because I'm torn between terror at what it is, _who_ it is, and genuine curiosity. The smart thing to do would be run away and never find out what it was, which is what half of my brain's telling me to do.

The thing is, I heard the footsteps. The sound of the stairwell door opening and someone moving, fast, before the crash. That was it. I haven't heard anything else since then, though. No other people.

It's either one person down there, or I'm getting a massive, stupid trick played on me right now. The idea has been spinning around in the back of my head for a while now. I wouldn't put it past anyone to trick someone into walking into their own death.

I poke my head out into the hallway. Nothing.

The only thing I see, really, is the very obvious bloody handprint on the window of the stairwell's door.

It's kind of hard to look at anything else.

I should definitely run in the opposite direction, now. There's no way that's a _good_ sign. But I still haven't heard anything. The cannon was before the noise, which means whoever it is can't be dead. Close to it, maybe. That's also not reassuring, but at least it means I'll have the slightest advantage in the world. Slowly, I slide the backpack off of my shoulders and hold it out in front of me. That actually helping is probably a long shot, but it's the only shot I really have as I creep down the hallway, closer and closer to where the noise had to have come from.

There's only one room left, now, no door to hide behind. I lean in as close as I can get, peeking around the corner.

Okay, yeah, _definitely_ a person.

I lean back in the hallway and take a deep breath. At least whoever it is doesn't seem to be moving, which seems awful to think, in retrospect. It also means they're ten times less likely to kill me, though.

I step into the doorway, still holding the backpack out. Still no movement. Clearly the noise I heard was the metal shelving falling to the ground, as large as it is, and then landing half on top of whoever appears to be stuck under it. I think that's the Eight guy. Vance, I'm pretty sure? I spoke to him _once_ , and I didn't think it was going to be important to remember.

Feeling bad about it, I shove my foot out and poke him in the leg with the toe of my boot. Still nothing.

I feel like I'm going to regret this. But the last time I left someone alone in a room it was a dead body that used to be someone I was so excited to call a friend and I don't know if I can do it again, especially to someone's that not actually dead.

I put the backpack back on and very carefully lean down. His right hand is covered in blood, the source of the handprint on the door, and clutching an equally bloody scalpel. Carefully I pry it out of his hand and put it in my own pocket. He can have it back later, after he chooses not to consider stabbing me with it. That's not exactly what I'm looking to accomplish right now.

The thing is, there's a lot more blood than that. It's all over the ground under his head too, though that's probably the fault of the shelf. It's heavy but I shove my hands underneath the shelf and start to lift it, hoping to god that I don't accidentally drop it back on him.

Even unconscious, I don't imagine he'd appreciate it.

Eventually I get it far enough to the right that I let go of it, and it drops back to the floor with a resounding clang. I glance back towards the doorway, like I'm waiting for someone else to come tromping in. If I heard it the first time, it wouldn't exactly be a stretch of the imagination that someone heard it this time.

I'll just have to do this a little bit faster than I probably should have.

Rolling him over cannot be any worse than when we did it to Camden, which is what I have to remind myself even as I grab his shoulder and start moving him. Camden looked positively awful. That's not to say Vance doesn't. His face is splattered with blood too, and there's a gash across his temple that matches the edge of the shelf a little too perfectly for it to be coincidence. It's safe to say that he hasn't been having a great day so far.

Still not worse than acid rain on someone's bare face.

I stay crouched by his side for a minute, wondering. Either he got attacked and fought back or he killed someone. Or both. There's too much blood for it not to be at least one of the two. That scares me, a little bit. What if he was running from the source of the cannon that fired a minute before I heard him come down here? He could've been the one behind it, for all I know.

And despite it all, there's still a stupid part of me that wants an actual answer.

I won't get one if I just leave him here.

Besides, he was one of the few people in training that didn't look like they wanted to chase me and Houston off instantly. One of the few people who acted remotely human.

"This is so dumb," I mumble to myself, as I hook my hands under his arms. The room I was hiding in is only a few feet down the hallway, and it seemed well-fortified enough. I'm no doctor, but there's a first aid kit in the bag. At this point I can't do any more harm that what he's apparently already done to himself.

At least I think so, anyway.

* * *

 **Olympia Kuidas, 13 years, District Eight Female.**

* * *

It doesn't feel right to ever stop running.

I know Jaeden died. I knew he'd die the second I shoved him down the stairs and ran for my own life.

And I haven't stopped running until now because I knew I'd start feeling bad the second I did.

My chest hurts, or maybe that's my lungs. I've hardly sat down for more than an hour at a time, just to try and get a little bit of sleep. Always before the anthem in the hopes that it would wake me up, and it's worked so far. I'm waiting for the night where it doesn't work. I've always found something to wake me up, but my body's exhausted. _All_ of me is exhausted. Eventually my brain is going to quit on me, say to hell with that, and sleep for twelve straight hours even if I don't want to.

If I don't die somewhere in those twelve hours, it'll be a miracle.

I can't shake the feeling that those three are still looking for me. Isi doesn't strike me as the type of person to give up so easily. It didn't take her that long to kill Jaeden. I had been running as fast as I possibly could but if they started chasing after me the second she was finished...

They've got supplies, too. Weapons. I haven't seen a single sign of any actual weapon and somehow they have multiple. I heard the parachute.

Eventually my feet stutter to a halt. I can hardly even feel them, my toes shoved so tightly against the ends of my boots I wouldn't be surprised if they were bleeding. I'm pretty high up by now; when I look out the window even the bridge is a long, long way down. I can't be far from the top. Everything up here looks pristine, although that's probably not the right word. Still the blood and the red walls but just standing here I can realize that no one else has been up this far yet. It feels less dangerous.

It's a scary feeling in itself.

I walk on, trying not to drag my feet as I stop at another door. There's an exit sign above it, powerless as everything else in here seems to be, but when I crack open the door it shows me only two more, rickety metal staircases before it hits the next door.

Guess I found the roof.

It can't be any worse than the rest of the place.

Besides, at this point, I'm getting dangerously close to drinking what appears to be acid rain, at least to half the tributes left in here. It didn't hurt me. There's no reason to believe it's going to start hurting me now.

I have to dig my shoulder into the door to get it open at all. The air is still, the sky red as can be. Nothing like what it was during the bloodbath, when I was terrified I was going to fall off my plate because of the wind alone. My boots splash into puddles left behind from the rain and I lean down to scoop some into my hands. It still doesn't hurt.

Besides, if I don't get something in me soon I'll die anyway. If anything this will just speed it up.

The water doesn't burn when it goes down. It doesn't taste right, exactly, but I didn't expect it to. I scoop up another handful and inch myself closer to the edge of the roof, peering over. There's no railings here, nothing to stop me from going over. I can see the three of them, far below, on the bridge. They're all moving. As I watch they trickle into the red tower, the one I'm in, one by one. There's nothing left behind in the Cornucopia when they go, and I sigh.

They probably are still looking for me, then. Or just hoping they stumble upon me like they did the first time.

They have a long way to walk if they want to do that.

Besides, the area up here is huge. There's not much in the way of hiding spots, but I could get behind the door at least, and drink my fill. It's already starting to help, the pain in my throat decreasing the more I drink. On top of that, they're only moving when the rain's stopped. If it hurts them, and it takes them until morning to get up here, then maybe they won't come outside at all.

It's an optimistic, far-fetched _maybe_.

For all I know, they could be going in the opposite direction, headed towards the ground. I was running down the first time, after all.

I settle down behind the door, in the driest spot I can find, and start listening. It feels good to sit down for a moment, to rest. Even leaning against the wall, small at it is, offers more comfort than the past two days have.

It's safe to say that this is not at all how I expected this to go. Really, it's the opposite.

But I made my decision. When I left Zion, when I literally cast Jaeden aside after not even a full day.

At least I'm still the one making the decisions.

* * *

 **Shirin Azami, 17 years, District Three Female.**

* * *

"I just want to know what it is."

It's not a surprise to me at all that Isi wants to follow whatever that shadow is, like it holds all the secrets to the universe. We haven't seen it properly for a few hours now, but Isi seems fairly convinced that it can't have gotten far.

It's not like it's a person. It's legs aren't just carrying it random places because it doesn't know where to go.

It's going to find _us_ , not the other way around. Isi's unabashed curiosity will get her, or all of us, killed eventually. Frankly, my life isn't worth that. My life isn't worth anything in this arena, no matter what it may be. I'm not dying for Isi, or for anyone. Not for anyone else in here. The longer she drags us on, the more likely it is that it's going to happen.

Tanis seems curious, but not really to find out what it is. More likely she wants to know what the hell it's doing, or why it seems to be skulking around the way it is. Morbid curiosity, if you ask me, something that I got over a long, long time ago. You'd think three days in they'd have given up on it by now, but apparently not.

I hear the slight, barely-there hissing noise before either of them do. Isi is too busy stomping around, trying to attract it's attention probably, and I think it's working. It's the same noise the shadows made the first night, before she killed the Twelve boy. That time they were helpful, though, led her to exactly what she wanted to see. This time it's not going to go that way.

It never happens the same way twice.

Tanis is about halfway down an adjacent hallway, peering around, and Isi stands in the junction with me just behind her.

There's no point to this.

And then the thing, whatever it is, materializes directly between the two of them.

There's no other proper way to describe it. I can see the shadows swirling around our feet, everyone can, but I blink and then something taller than all three of us is standing in the middle of the hallway, dark and cloaked, holding a hooked scythe.

Somehow, not one of us seems as concerned as we should be.

That is, until one of the shadows swirling around it's feet drifts a little bit closer to Isi. It wraps, almost delicately, around her ankle.

Again, none of us seem concerned. At least until she ends up flat on her back in the next second, the shadow still tangled around her ankle, and then it disappears.

And she almost disappears with it.

I have no idea how it happens, or even what does. One second she's hitting the ground in front of me and the next she's three feet behind me, getting dragged away quicker and quicker as I stand there and just watch. The shadows are still curling through the air around her, like they're trying to swallow her whole.

"Jesus _christ_ ," Tanis snaps, and then she wrenches the bonesaw out of my hand and takes off after her.

They don't get that far, and I never am able to make myself move. The shadow gets to the end of the hallway dragging her when Tanis gets there. There's nothing solid to hit, to injure, but she swipes the bonesaw through the shadows that still have a hold on Isi's ankle and they dissipate, melting away into the empty air. Isi, to her credit, hardly made a sound, but now she drags her legs up as close to her chest as she can possibly get them, watching as the last of them disappear into the darkness at the next corner.

There's a mark around her ankle, a coil of deathly white skin that's even paler than she already was, where the shadows wrapped around her.

"What the fuck," she manages.

"Told you six different times it was a bad idea," I say flatly, and hold out my hand for the bonesaw as I approach. Tanis scowls at me, even though she for once actually looks a little bit concerned.

God, it's about time.

Reluctantly, she all but slaps the bonesaw back into my outstretched palm. I don't think she likes being the only one here without an actual weapon. She offers her hand down to Isi who takes it and hauls herself back to her feet, much to my surprise. She glowers at me too.

"Appreciate the help."

"You found out what it is, didn't you?" I ask, and I think if she could stab me right now, just the slightest bit without killing me, she probably would. The thing is, she doesn't have the restraint, to not dig the knife all the way in. With her it's all or nothing.

"Do you want to continue on, or?"

I'm pushing my luck here, I know it. But this has made her realize, in the very least, that not everything in here is under her control. Maybe she's used to that in the outside world, but the one we're standing in right now doesn't care about what she came from, or what she's used to.

It'll drag you off no matter who you are.

Isi stalks around me, clutching a knife, Tanis on her heels. Apparently that's a yes to continuing on, then, though I suspect we'll be looking for actual people now. Her grip on the knife isn't as steady as it usually is, though. This has shaken her confidence, sky high as it was. Even if it's only been knocked down the slightest fraction, that could go a long way.

And we've still got a long way to go.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

There's only so much to do in a place like this.

It's not like I'm fit to go running headfirst into things right now, even if I want to. Dimara's not exactly the the type of person that's going to try it on her own, either. We both know we're going to need more than what we currently have.

It's a miracle we haven't seen anyone yet. If everyone else, or at least the vast majority, felt the way I did though, it's not hard to imagine why. Only six deaths three days in? Either they're letting us set our own pace or we're about to get rocketed into something not too pretty. So we need to be prepared for that.

Camden may be three days dead but he wasn't the only obstacle.

At least we seem to agree on that. We haven't exactly been paying attention to the anthem, so there's no way to tell who's dead and who's alive.

No way to tell who we're going to see next.

I've at least collected the broken end of a table leg, cracked off at one end, but Dimara's been approximately zero help thus far, threatening to drop a spider on my head around three different times now. Every time she comes near me with her fist closed I either expect her to try it again, or punch me.

Or both.

I have a few pieces of glass though, too, and some nails, and eventually settle down cross-legged on the ground. I've got the backpack now, because Dimara trusts me to not accidentally drop it down the stairs in my no longer sickness-riddled state of mind. But bandages and nearly empty water bottles aren't going to help me in what I need to do.

Dimara approaches, both hands thankfully empty, and stares down at me.

"What are you doing?"

"Do you have a rock, or something?"

Yeah, hold on, let me just pull one out of my ass real quick," she scoffs. "Why would I have a _rock_?"

I shrug. I'm not going to be able to shove shards of glass into a chunk of wood with my bare hands, at least not without maiming myself, which I don't really need to add to the list of potential problems we could soon have.

She sighs. "Hold on."

It's not a mace, not really, but at least it'll be decently close. That is if I can ever figure out a way to actually put this all together. It's better than what we currently have in the way of weapons, which is approximately fuckall. I know Dimara's itching for one just as much as I am at this point. There's only so much you can do with your bare hands, and we've done a handful of those already.

Eventually she returns with a few things in her hands, sitting down in front of me. I eye her wands warily.

"They're not spiders, you baby, chill."

She drops a few things on the ground - something that almost looks like a paperweight, another mangled piece of wood that looks like it came off a table, a metal medical tray that clangs to the tile in front of my feet. It's most of the stuff we've already seen that's not something random or broken, discarded off to the side.

Well, it's not a rock. But at least it's something.

"You gonna make me one too?" Dimara asks after a few minutes of watching, mostly in silence. The paperweight seems to be working the best so far to force the glass into the wood, and I wouldn't mind holding onto that either after I'm done.

"Sure. Go find me some more stuff."

I don't know if Dimara legitimately wants me to do it or if she'd just rather risk my hands than her own. I've got a few little cuts already, hardly enough to sting, from the jagged edges of the glass. I'm pretty sure I've got splinters too, but those are pretty unavoidable when you're running into a broken piece of furniture every other second. This is not going to be pretty, just like nothing has been so far, but at least it will be able to get the job done.

If Celia can nail someone with a single piece of broken glass, then being able to swing a dozen of them around at someone will be even better.

 _And_ it has a handle. Bonus.

I can hear Dimara rummaging around in the next room over. She's been unrealistically good, this whole time. I know if I was her I probably would have left my ass to die of the plague in a corner somewhere, but she didn't. I don't even know if the thought ever crossed her mind. Sure, I've been sharing the majority of my shit with her, but even that she didn't sign up for.

Then again, we all splintered apart. Who knows if Celia is even alive, Oeshe too. Who knows if she'll ever even find out.

There's the sound of something sliding to the floor in the next room and Dimara pops her head out of the doorway, waving a broken table leg at me.

"Hurry it up. I'm next."

"Here. Take this." I slide the metal pan across the floor towards her and she scoops it up off the ground, dangling from her fingers.

"What am I going to do with this in the meanwhile? Beat someone to death with it?"

"It's no worse than what you've already done."

Maybe she'd hurt anyone else for that, even kill them. Now she just shakes her head and rolls her eyes, because she knows it's true, and disappears back into the room, table leg and metal pan and all.

I wouldn't put it past her, anyway, considering I'd do the same.

* * *

 **Oeshe Ito, 18 years, District Eleven Female.**

* * *

If she thinks she can avoid me forever, she's wrong.

I don't think Anya has clued into the fact that it's me who followed her down here. There's no reason she should. She hasn't turned the flashlight back on since she hit the bottom of the stairs and must've heard me following her.

And why wouldn't I come down here after her? I'd been following her since I first saw that flashlight anyway. I know she has the backpack, though I've never gotten close enough to see what she actually has; if it's the same thing that was in Celia's bag or if it could be something more worthwhile. Right now, it doesn't matter. That bag could be virtually empty for all I care.

Anya was the one person out of that group that I had to have talked to the least, and something in my head is still telling me not to do it. That she doesn't deserve it. And hell, she doesn't.

But right now I don't really care.

I'm _starving_ , and the dehydration is starting to screw with me. All I have to my name, currently, is the letter opener that seems so stupid now, and the fact that I'm pretty sure we've gone in one gigantic circle about seven odd times by now.

Anya and I must be on the same page. Something's down here. It would probably be a hell of a lot easier to find it if she would use her flashlight, but she doesn't want to risk me being able to see either. Jokes on her, I haven't gotten more than twenty feet behind her this whole time. I can't even see an outline of her in front of me, just the barest sounds of her footsteps, no matter how much she struggles to be quiet. Everything down here is echoing.

Her breathing is a little labored, too, just enough that I know something's wrong. She sounds a lot like Celia did. At least of what I remember.

Her footsteps stutter to a halt and I lean back against the wall, just in case she decides to turn back.

There's a very loud, ugly grating noise, and then red light spills out into the darkened hallway. I can see her now, faint as she is. Maybe about fifteen feet down, and that looks like a very heavy door that she just shoved open. Her entire face is cast in harsh light and I can see the blood, crusted around her nose and down the side of her neck.

Definitely what Celia had.

That's another win for me, then. I see her turn back and duck down a little closer to the floor. The light isn't stretching nearly far enough for her to see me.

It has to be daytime now, up above. We've been down here for hours, what seems like forever. For all I know it has been.

That's when Anya makes a break for it.

I see her lunge for the door and then disappear through the foot-wide gap, just before she must put her hands against the opposite side to shove it closed.

Absolutely not. Not happening.

I slam my shoulder so hard into the door that it's no doubt going to bruised to all hell in a few hours, but I can handle that if it means getting out of this alive and not left alone in a creepy, extra dark basement.

And I really, really wouldn't mind the backpack either.

I wiggle through the gap left and come face to face with Anya, on the other side of the door. I have no idea where the red light's coming from but it's bathing the whole little room in the same harsh, glaring light. On the opposite wall there's a door taking up nearly the whole space. And I've never seen one in person, because why would I, but that looks an awful lot like the door to a bank vault. Why the _hell_ is that down here?

No time to find out.

I've still got the letter opener. And judging by the look on her face, she doesn't have a weapon at all.

There really isn't a point to saying I'm sorry, not at all.

I plunge the blade down towards her and she just barely moves out of the way in time, eyes widening when she realizes what I'm holding onto. It's nothing crazy but it's certainly better than nothing, which is something I think just dawned on her. She slips the backpack off her shoulders and swings it at me.

Yes, thank you very much. That's exactly what I want.

It hits me squarely in the shoulder and I grab for it with my free hand, fingers catching against the zipper. Anya's eyes widen again. Did she not realize that I wanted it, or did she think I was just trying to hit her for giggles? Maybe she thought I wouldn't, because we had three and a half conversations a few days ago. But my loyalty to Dimara and Celia didn't extend to her, and even the former didn't last very long, now did it?

When I swing my arm again the blade catches her in the forearm and she launches herself backwards, away from me. She only drags me forward with her, because I'm still holding onto the backpack and there's no way in hell I'm letting go of it.

She pulls the backpack harder, causing me to stumble, and then kicks me in the shin.

Alright, fine.

I let her kick me again and roll to the ground, dragging her down with me. It's like Tavian all over again, but where he was bigger and stronger and probably would've wound up killing me if Dimara hadn't intervened, Anya isn't going to be so lucky.

She lands half on top of me and I kick her off with no intention to follow.

I lean the slightest bit to the left and let the blade come down.

It's not the sharpest thing in the world, nor is it the longest, so there's no way it'll kill her unless I really want it to. And I don't. It's not like I hate her. But the blade still goes an inch deep, two inches, into her stomach before I stop myself, because I really don't want her following me. Her grip goes slack on the remaining strap of the bag as it happens, a soft gasp escaping her. It almost sounds like shock, not pain.

Maybe she thought I wouldn't actually do it.

I grab the backpack and practically hurdle over her, still on the ground, taking the letter opener with me as I go. There's still blood all over my fingers as I yank it out and fly back out the door. No matter how deep it really was I could've tried the vault door, seen what was on the other side, but I think I've tested my luck enough for today.

I think I've tested my luck enough for the next century.

There's no cannon, but I think Anya has, too.

* * *

I swear there's not that many no death days after this. I just like being annoying.

I put a poll up on my profile because none of you answered me and like I said, being annoying is my thing. At this point I'm just looking to gauge how many people are still actively invested in this thing, because what the hell is reviewing in the year 2018, apparently. Preferably do pick a full eight choices but if you don't I guess I'll never really know, so go nuts with that. Except for the person who picked four yesterday. I saw that.

Shout-out to the few of you that still do review, though, you're the best.

Until next time.


	23. Start Running

Arena, Midday, Day Three.

* * *

 **Isi Akiloff, 17 years, District Five Female.**

* * *

There's no way we're _ever_ repeating what happened last night.

That was unlike anything else I've ever experienced before, that split second terror, wondering what the hell was going to become of me. For a moment there I was convinced I was done for, that there wasn't anything anyone could do to save me.

For all I know, there almost wasn't. Shirin didn't move at all, evidently not caring about whether it let go of me or not. Much to my surprise is was Tanis that moved, though even she hesitated a second. There was a reason she didn't move at all when it first showed up. It probably came down to the fact that she didn't want to be stuck alone with Shirin for the rest of her days.

I have no idea what's going through either of their heads, and it's infuriating.

They're both looking through opposite windows, now, Tanis looking up and Shirin looking down, at god know's what. We didn't make it back to the bridge on time for the rain to start, and I don't see the point behind making the unnecessary trek back to the Cornucopia when we all know there's nothing back there anyway. There have to be people in this building.

There has to be.

We're almost out of water, too. I'm trying to choke down a cracker, which are already beginning to taste more like saw dust as the days go on, when I see Tanis narrow her eyes.

It could be anything. The sky could be doing something funky, as it seems to be doing most times, or their could be some new mutt flying around. I've seen a few birds, off in the distance, enough times that I've wondered how long it will take for them to get closer. They're already big enough as is.

"What?" I ask finally, and Tanis starts. Her eyes are still narrowed, staring upwards, and after a minute Shirin looks up too, out his own window.

"There's someone up there."

"What?" I ask incredulously, because even Shirin's face doesn't seem to be saying that. Then again, when does he look like much?

"There's a parachute headed for the roof," she explains. "Someone has to be up there. Doesn't look like there was much in it. A note, maybe?"

Judging by the lack of dissension on Shirin's part, he has to be seeing the same thing she is. I don't need to see it myself to confirm it. That would just be wasting more time. I choke the last bit of cracker down and zip my bag shut, waiting for the two of them to turn around.

"Let's go then."

At least this time around there's a bit less arguing about it. We're only maybe ten floors from the top anyway, it's not like it'll take very long to get up there. There's no way a parachute would be headed for the roof for any other reason. I have to admit, it's not a bad hiding spot. With the rain you wouldn't catch me up there even if it meant my death. Clearly whoever's up there is willing to risk everything for it.

And if someone hadn't been looking upward, no one would have ever known.

I see the roof's exit door and pause. There's no windows up here anymore, no telling what we're walking into. But right now I don't care. All I know is that it's been over two days since we've seen anyone, two days since someone died at our hand.

We're running out of time. Eventually someone will get bored of us.

But not if someone's up here.

I stop at the last step and crack the door open. The rain buffets in instantly, the icy cold wind along with it, and I take a step back. I can't see anyone. All I can see is the parachute lying in the middle of the roof, drenched to the core. Tanis was right. Whatever's in it isn't a weapon, or anything significant. For all I know, it could be anything.

All I can really focus on is the faint silhouette I see passing by the doorway, just now headed for the parachute.

I slam the door open and directly into them.

They let out a startled scream as the door collides with them and they hit the ground with a thud, the door clanging back against the frame. It's the Eight girl, already soaked to the bone, who's eyes widen the second she turns around, still on the ground.

The same one that pushed the Twelve boy down the stairs. God, everything just comes full circle here, doesn't it?

She scrambles to her feet and takes off for the parachute. Probably hoping that whatever's in it is going to be enough to save her.

It's not.

There's no way in hell I'm going out there and risking myself, but there's no need to. I raise one of the knives and send it flying after her. I'm no pro, not even close, and it may not be enough to kill her but it doesn't have to. I did all the work the first time, someone else can finish this one off.

It's only _fair._

The knife hits home right above the line of her hip and she screams again, collapsing to the ground half a foot away from the chute.

I turn back. "Someone going to take a turn?"

Tanis doesn't move, but she doesn't have to. Shirin stalks past me and out into the rain, looking a little irritated about it. Before he gets there the Eight girl reaches back and pulls the knife out of her own back. An impressive feat, I'll give her that, and she's not even crying. There's no point in fearing for Shirin, not when she knows she's screwed and she's only got one little knife, but apparently the knife isn't going to be an issue.

She leans as far away from Shirin as she can get, which isn't even that far to begin with, and lobs my knife over the edge of the roof.

I stare. Shirin stops, leaning over her, and Tanis makes a choked noise that almost sounds a little amused.

I hate them all. Every single one of them.

At least she doesn't get to do much more than that. She doesn't even try to crawl away as Shirin raises the bonesaw and buries it in the back of her neck. There's an alarming amount of blood, spewing all over the roof and his shoes, trickling into the puddles, but he doesn't seem to care.

I don't know if there's anything he cares about, because the rain doesn't seem to be effecting him either.

Typical. But he can fix his own shit.

Her cannon goes off. Shirin reaches over her and grabs the parachute, turning back to us. He drops it in my hand, and the excess rain burns against my palms but I quickly unravel it anyway, staring down at the little slip of paper in my hands.

'START RUNNING.'

"Don't think she listened," Tanis comments idly, leaning around my arm. I look around. Her body is still lying in the middle of the roof, and Shirin's already waiting on the landing, squeezing water out of the ends of his shirt, and somewhere on the ground below us is one of my knives, probably never to be found again.

"No. I don't think so."

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

I wake up, in comparison to most of the other times, rather peacefully.

It's a far cry from choking on your own blood or hearing something and wondering what was just around the corner. To be honest, it's kind of nice.

At least, it is nice. Until I realize Rory's gone.

I sit there for what has to be considered way too long, staring at the spot where he had a hundred percent been laying before I last fell asleep. He'd been doing better, a lot better. I had even pointed that out.

And now he's gone. Are you fucking kidding me?

It gets worse when I look down at my feet and realize the backpack's gone too.

Oh, he's dead. Did he seriously just ditch me _and_ take all of my stuff while I was innocently asleep? I hadn't even been letting him leave the room because I was pretty convinced he'd manage to find a way to fall over while I wasn't around and split his head open anyway. This is exactly what I get for caving, for trying to help him even when I told myself not to. This is exactly what I get for catching feelings, of all stupid things.

I get to my feet and start down the hallway. There's not much down this way, but I'll at least check here first. Who even knows what direction he went. I said he was getting better but there's no way he got that far. I wasn't even asleep for that long.

The first room is still as empty as it was yesterday when I went through it, and the second is too. I'm already rapidly approaching the stairwell. Would he have gone up or down? Why would I even be able to guess?

I open the last door and there he is.

The door slams into the opposite wall so hard and he doesn't even move, curled into the corner as he is, and I stop. The room's the size of a shoebox, one of the only doors I hadn't bothered to open in the hallway. There's absolutely nothing in here except one cupboard, opposite to the corner he's apparently fallen asleep in, and a tap, steadily dripping water.

I blink. What?

My backpack is sitting open by his feet. One of the water bottles is directly under the tap, almost completely full, the other sitting on the edge of the counter, just waiting to be next.

I let my head thunk into the doorframe.

Of course he didn't actually fucking leave. He'd probably have a heart attack if I even suggested it and then maybe cry about it later on. He still hasn't moved. I know, despite getting better, how exhausted we both are. It's not exactly a surprise.

And yet I still thought he left.

I grab the full water bottle and cap it, leaning over him to put it in the bag. I grab the other and shove it under the tap. Who knows how long he's been sitting here, waiting for one of them to fill up. No wonder he fell asleep, with only the slow, rhythmic drip of the tap to keep him company, because of course he wouldn't bother waking me up either.

I drop down on the ground next to him, leaning back until his arm is pressed between my shoulder blades. Someone has to keep watch, even if I'm also exhausted, and it doesn't appear like he's gonna be up to it anytime soon. Besides, it's not like there's anywhere else to go in this tiny room, or at least that's what I'll keep telling myself.

It's me touching him that finally makes him jolt, and although I'm not looking directly at am I can tell he's looking around, wondering what exactly is going on.

"Did I fall asleep?" Rory asks after a moment, before he leans his head back against the wall.

"Sure did. Appreciate the heart attack."

"Fuck. Sorry."

And the last _of course_ of the day, why not, because now he's apologizing.

"We'll move when the second one fills up," I say. "We're good for now."

"Sounds good." That must have been enough permission for him to go back to sleep, because I can tell without even looking that he drifts back off rather quickly. That has to say a lot, about how he feels about me. The first time he freaked out as much as a person could freak out and now he hardly moves when he realizes I'm here.

For a while I watch the bottle. It's filling painfully slow, but it's better than no water at all. Rory stays asleep behind me, knees curled up to his chest. It really is like hell has frozen over in here.

There's no way I'm letting myself fall asleep, but the second bottle hits halfway full however many hours later and my eyes are dangerously close to drifting shut. It's hard, when there's nothing else to focus on.

And I'm about two seconds from waking him up when the entire building shakes.

It's not an exaggeration. Dust literally drifts down from the ceiling as the very floor beneath me shifts and moves. Rory moves behind me, blinking himself awake once again. This time, though, he looks confused. I think I'm sharing that sentiment.

It goes still again, and then keeps moving. The bottle under the tap nearly falls to the side and I lunge for it, shoving it back at Rory.

"Pack the stuff up. I'll be right back."

I'm hardly on my feet when the building moves again and nearly pitches me into the nearest wall. Rory leans out of the doorway to watch me go, shoving stuff back into the bag. There was a balcony in one of the rooms at the other end of the hallway, and that's what I'm making my way back towards now. Pieces of furniture tip over the second I get into the room. There's no way I'm imagining the slight angle everything is hanging at right now.

I edge very carefully out onto the balcony, locking my hands around the railing, and look down.

The entire bottom of the building is crumbling.

It's hard to tell if it's more the foundation or the actual ground. Everything is churning together, water and dirt mixing into one far below on the ground. The building lurches to the side again, headed even further towards the right. Below me windows are shattering, the few that were left intact to begin with, the glass spiraling down to the ground below.

The bridge, miraculously, is still intact.

But there's no way this building will be standing by the end of the day.

"Rory, we gotta go!"

* * *

 **Parker Walden, 13 years, District Five Male.**

* * *

It's almost like I knew something was going to happen.

There was no way to predict what, of course. But I knew things had been moving too slowly for us. Too slowly for the whole arena, really, in comparison to the usual. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if bringing one building down was the Gamemakers way of ensuring things got a little more exciting.

We're only a few odd stories up from the bridge, but when I poke my head into the stairwell a chunk of the ceiling goes hurtling past my head and crumbles into pieces on the floor below.

Definitely not the stairs, then. And the ground's too far away.

There's also the issue of all the stuff we've spent so much time building. It seems like such a shame to have it all go to waste, but we don't have a choice. Rooke's trying to pull as much of it down as we can, even when I come back into the room, but with the way everything's tilting it's becoming harder by the second.

"We good to go?"

He doesn't know. Of course he doesn't know. I stride past him and out onto the balcony, rickety as it is. The bridge is maybe a foot or two to the left, about five up. Survivable, obviously, if the building doesn't make it any harder in the coming minutes.

"You're not serious," Rooke says flatly. I almost wish I wasn't.

"What if it breaks?"

There's no way to tell if it will, either. I don't think it will, but what I think isn't going to be enough right now. They're not messing with the building to watch half of us fall to our deaths. If they wanted that they could tip the entire building over right now and kill us all.

But they're not.

We can survive this.

I grab the edge of the railing and very carefully lift my leg over the edge of it. Rooke lunges forward and grabs my arm as the building shakes again, trying to hold onto me and all of the things he's collected without falling over himself.

I won't lie. It's absolutely terrifying, looking down and knowing this could be it if I take one wrong step. The bridge may hold me but it won't be able to do absolutely anything if I miss it entirely.

"What do I do if you fall?" Rooke asks. I swing my other leg over and inch as far to the left as I can get.

"Don't jump after me?"

"Sweet. Thanks. That's inspiring a lot of confidence."

There's nothing I can say right now that will make any of this better, and we both know it.

I'm about to tell him to let go when his hand tightens on my arm even more. Two people come peeling out of the building below us, already on the bridge. It seems like at least some people were willing to brave the stairs. That's the Fours, I think. They don't look like they have much more than we do, save for a backpack. We watch them disappear into the black tower, the shaking of the building only getting worse as the seconds go by.

I look back at Rooke, and nods. He takes a deep breath.

He lets go at the same time I do.

Closing my eyes seems like the safe thing to do, just in case I do miss. I don't want to see myself miss the last thing that could save me. I don't let myself look away, though. The glass of the bridge approaches in what seems like half a second and then I'm smashing into it, rolling a few feet away from the sight of impact.

Nothing breaks underneath me.

"You okay?" Rooke shouts and I haul myself to my feet, waving him off.

"Come on!"

He pitches the rope and the few pieces of our trap that he managed to collect down at me and I gather them into a pile while he clambers over the edge, looking like he'd rather do anything than let go.

Surprisingly, it doesn't take him as long as I thought he would. He all but launches himself off the edge of the balcony, and for a split second I think he pushed himself so hard he's going to overshoot it. Somehow, that would make more sense than him just slipping and falling.

He hits the bridge three feet away from me, wincing. I reach down and grab him, already pulling him to his feet.

"We're going after them. Let's go."

Rooke shoots me an incredulous look as I haul him the rest of the way up, rubbing at his side, but doesn't protest. He glances towards the black tower, where the two of them have already vanished.

Nothing can be any worse of an idea that what we're dealing with currently. All of our plans just got effectively ruined. We can re-build, though. Start over. Issue is we need _somewhere_ to start, and we have no idea what could happen. Twelve hours from now all of these buildings could be on the ground.

Twelve hours from now we could both be dead.

For once, we need the leg up.

And maybe this is it.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

"You have the worst ideas," Blair mutters.

Sue me for being blatantly curious about how fast the state of the white tower seems to be deteriorating. It's already in a precarious position, looking like it's being held up by invisible strings. The second they're cut the whole thing is going to smash into the ground.

And I want to have a good view when it happens.

It's not like we were that far from the roof, either. With the rain and the frigid air fogging up all the windows, its a little hard to see what's going on.

And I like knowing what's going on.

I open the roof's door and the rain splashes, burning, onto my bare hands instantly.

"Yep. That still fucking hurts."

" _Good_ ," Blair insists, as he strides right past me out onto the roof. "It's almost nice to see something affecting you for once and not me."

As much as it's not funny, it's the truth. I think he's been getting dealt the worse hand thus far. I draw back in the doorway as he looks around, edging closer to the roof. The white tower is still standing, as awkward of an angle as ever, but I don't think it'll be that way for much longer.

"Hey!" Blair calls, waving his arm frantically. If he lets go of that homemade mace he spent so many hours working on I'm going to kill him. "Look!"

I look to where he's pointing, to the still standing red tower. There are two silhouettes up there too, a third behind them. A hovercraft is rapidly appearing from in the distance, descending towards what has to be a body in the middle of the roof.

It really is impossible to see anything that's any less than the size of the buildings.

I pull my tattered rags as much over my head as I can and shove my hands under my arms, walking out onto the roof after him. He holds out an arm and all but drapes it over my head, hardly touching my shoulders. Not the most comfortable, I'll say that, but he's taking the brunt of the rain at least.

Well, even without a clear view it's not hard to tell who it is. Who it has to be. The hovercraft descends, carefully in the wind, and scoops up the body before it takes off, zipping directly over our heads. Blair turns to watch it go, shielding his narrowed eyes against the rain, but I don't take my eyes off them.

All three of them are hiding a lot like I was, so at least I know they're having about as shitty of a time as we are.

I also think they're doing a whole lot better at this killing thing than we are. At least since the first day.

"God, I hate them," Blair says after a moment. I snort.

"Thought that was just Camden."

I don't think he really hates them, not like he says. The animosity he had towards Camden can only extend so far, to so many people. Most of them never did anything to him.

They may never have done anything to him, but they never said otherwise either.

Blair raises his arm again and shouts, whatever words he was saying lost in the wind and the rain. One of them looks up and the other two follow quickly, staring over the vast distance between the two of us. They were more focused on the hovercraft, the building collapsing just on their other side.

I don't have to be close to them to imagine they don't look impressed.

Blair never puts his arm down, and after a moment apparently decides giving them the finger is the most appropriate response to our current situation. The thing is, I know if I don't he'll harp on me later for it, and I raise my own finger too, even though it hurts like hell and I'd rather not.

He lets out a delighted laugh and I shake my head, grinning.

The building is still slipping further and further towards the ground as the earth gives away beneath it. There haven't been any cannons, not besides the one for whoever was on the roof, so it seem as if the people inside that one have at least gotten lucky thus far.

One by one, the three of them trickle back inside. They were back to watching the building too, before that, because apparently our antics aren't worth paying attention to.

Jokes on them.

"Any minute now," I say quietly.

We stand there and watch it happen. The bridge connecting the white tower to the others cracks, right at the end, and then starts to splinter away. It crumbles into a thousand pieces as the building starts tipping backwards. Furniture and god knows what else is coming flying out of the windows and the holes all over the outside of the building just keep getting bigger and bigger as the building rips itself apart.

The ground below it already looks like a warzone.

To think it hasn't even hit the ground yet.

I already know this whole place is going to shake when it does.

* * *

 **Zion Lancaster, 18 years, District Eleven Male.**

* * *

We aren't as fast as I'd hoped we'd be.

It should have been pretty simple. All we had to do was get to the ground and get into either of the two other towers, as long as it wasn't the one that was about two seconds away from collapsing on top of us.

If this was a normal, every day scenario, the building wouldn't have come down as fast as it did. I wasn't stopping every few seconds to check, out whatever window I could find, because I thought we'd get trapped. I was checking to see how long we had.

That length of time turns out to be much, much shorter than I thought it would be.

The thing is, we never stopped running. By all rights we should have been fast enough.

We hit the ground, not even halfway to one of the other towers, when the ground finally gives away.

I can feel it. The earth shifts beneath my feet, one last wave that seems so insignificant after feeling the rest of it, but that single shift is all it needs.

The tower comes down.

Early spins around, maybe two or three feet behind me, and stares upward. I'm forced to stop too, because there's no way I'm going to let her stand there for all of eternity. You'd think, the way she acts all high and mighty, that she'd have enough common sense not to stare at a collapsing building when it's collapsing _towards us_.

"Early!" I shout, and she looks torn, between watching it hit and coming after me.

Why that's even a debatable option right now I'm not exactly sure.

I dive forward and grab her, and even if it's not going to land directly on top of us it's going to land pretty damn close. I shove her forwards, as fast as I can, and even that's not fast enough.

Something hits the ground next to me. A chunk of wall, or of the ceiling.

I throw myself to the ground.

There's nothing else I can do, but curl up on the ground and tuck my head as tight against my chest as I can and pray that nothing hits me. The entire building collapses around us, around me. The earth shakes like it's going to open up and take me with it. I have no idea where Early ended up - if she kept running or if she's half a foot away. The air is so cloudy, swirling with debris and dust, that I'd never see her even if she was.

Plaster goes raining over me and then something slices into the back of my leg, and I cringe, feeling blood start to flow. I never look up. It feels like the world is ending around me, that if I look up it'll be the last thing I ever see.

It feels like forever. Things splinter around me and open up holes into the dirt. All the while the rain continues to burn my bare hands and my face where it's pressed as hard into the ground as I can physically manage, because acid rain is now the better option here. The bag is protecting my back, but everything else is exposed.

A deathly silence settles over the whole place.

Even through my hands pressed over my ears, I hear everything settle. When I crack open my eyes it feels like I've been transported somewhere else entirely; the dust is so thick in the air I can't see two feet in front of me.

I roll over and six different things dig into my spine. The pieces of a broken stair, the metal frames of the building. There's a gash on the back of my leg probably from much of the same.

My sight may be terrible right now, but Early's nowhere in it.

It takes me a few seconds to even choke out her name, coughing and hacking like my lungs are about to come up. I get nothing in response. I grab the edge of a large piece of debris and pull myself to my feet, trying to brush the dust out of my eyes.

"Early!"

Nothing, once again. My ears are ringing so badly I don't even know if I'd hear her respond anyway.

My leg is burning but that really doesn't matter right now. I stumble forward, into the nearest pile of rumble, and nearly trip over my own feet as the pile moves underneath me.

I still can't see anything, and that might be the worst part. If something happened, it could be the best. For all I know Early's under ten straight feet of obliterated ground, never to be found. It's not like I would've heard the cannon amidst everything else.

A shadow pulls itself out of the dust, thirty odd feet out.

I don't move.

It takes me a second, blinking rapidly. I didn't see anyone else when we came peeling out of the building, even if it wasn't really my first concern.

And I've said more than once that she was too tall and skinny for her age.

"Early!" I yell again, because that seems to be the normal for us. The shadow turns off towards me, unsteadily. I start moving as fast as I can, because it has to be. She nearly collides with me, bleeding from the head, her eyes dazed. When I grab both of her arms she looks up at me, almost confused. Like she hardly even remembers hearing me in the first place.

"You good?" I ask hesitantly, and after a moment she nods. She pulls one of her arms out from mine and touches her forehead, wincing when her fingers come away bloody.

I wish I could see. Really see. I want to know what we just survived, because I think that may give me hope for the future. The air is still thick and foggy but I can see the place the tower was standing just minutes ago, now nothing but the horizon visible far off in the distance.

I still haven't let go, and I can feel her pulse pounding in every inch of her.

Right now, at least that's not a bad feeling.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

Sue me for thinking I should move once in a while.

If it weren't for the gnawing hunger in the pit of my stomach, I wouldn't have. There's only so long I can stare at the empty, bleak horizon though, wondering if anyone would be nice enough to send me some food.

Long story short, it appears the answer was no.

Which is why I'm here.

There was nothing on the ground to be scavenged. I figured that out pretty quickly, and wouldn't have had time even if there was to collect it, what with the tower collapsing and all. I just run, pretty damn wisely, for my life. There was no telling what would happen if I stayed up here. The falling debris could kill me, or the other two could start collapsing after it.

Realistically, the basement sounded like the best option.

Standing down here now, I'm not so sure.

It's only my hand on the closest wall, and the electrical cords looped around my shoulders, that make me feel better. If something or someone is down here at least I have something to defend myself with. Not that I'll be able to see them coming. I'm like a blind old man, currently.

Not exactly something I'm comfortable being compared to.

The dark's not something to be scared, of though. It's the things in it. Until I see something there's no reason to be scared. I won't let their stupid mind games screw with me, or intimidate me.

What was that rule, about keeping one of your hands on the wall at all times to escape something? I don't think there's a way out of here besides the one I came down here with, is the issue. There's no other exit here. I'm only down here in the first place because underground might be the only place safe from any collapsing buildings. At least that's what I'm doing, and it seems to be working so far.

Nothing that happened up there has affected me.

It feels like I'm walking forever, constantly twisting and turning, my left hand never leaving the wall. My right is constantly holding tight to the cords. They're more than a little reassuring.

I catch sight of the first light I've seen down here thus far, red and very faint, spilling out of a half-open doorway.

Well, that looks ominous.

The wall's taking me right towards it, though, and even if I don't remember the exact rule I'm not changing my path now. I haven't heard anything except for the creaking of the walls and my own footsteps, soft as they are.

But there's someone off in that little room, to my right. That becomes obviously very quickly.

The closer I get the more I can see. Their legs come into view first, flat out along the ground, and then the rest of them, leaning back against the wall. Anya. One of her hands is pressed to her stomach, blood seeping out between her fingers.

She doesn't notice me as quickly as I noticed her. She looks up, very slowly, and doesn't even really react, save for a very bitter smile.

"What the fuck happened to you?" I ask, eventually. She looks back up at the ceiling, while I stare at the huge metal door behind her.

"What does it look like?"

"Looks like you got shanked, if I'm being honest." She sounds surprisingly strong, if that really is the case. The smile never really leaves her face, and it's slightly un-nerving. She nods, confirming my suspicions, and doesn't show any indication that she really cares about me standing here.

"What's behind the door?" I wonder, and she shrugs.

"Wouldn't know," she says. "Tried to open it. Don't think I'm strong enough right now."

Well, now I'm curious. I really didn't want to be curious but now she's got me. Bloodloss is probably doing a number on her. Coupled with the isolation and the darkness, it's no wonder she's just sitting here.

She gets to her feet surprisingly quick, still clutching at her abdomen, and turns towards the door. I take the smallest pace forward.

"Want to open it for me?" Anya asks, but before she's even got the words out of her mouth I've made my decision and can't really care to think if I'll regret it or not. Whatever's behind there, it has to be worth it. I don't plan on sharing something like that with someone like her. There's no personal feelings at all.

A weird shift from what my typical life is.

I shrug the cords off my shoulder and throw myself at her.

I've got the cords over her head and around her neck before she even turns around. When they tighten around her throat she chokes, her hands flying up, searching for a way underneath them. Getting shanked aside, she's wiggling like there's no tomorrow, but that only has to be making it worse.

She throws an elbow back into my stomach, once and then twice. I tighten the cords again and she rears her foot back and kicks me, as hard as she can in the leg.

My fingers must loosen, just the slightest bit, and she turns. The cords are still wrapped around her neck but she really doesn't seem to care as she turns back and puts her hands against my chest, my arms. Trying to force me to let go.

Not going to happen.

I re-tighten my grip so hard on them that she falls forward onto me and sends both of us flying back into the wall, her mostly on top of me. She yells in pain and I clutch both ends of the cord in one hand, reaching down. My fingers find the wound in her stomach before she can think to stop me and she screams as more blood spurts out between my fingers, dripping between us.

I've got my hand half _inside_ her stomach, and god is that not a good thought, but I shove her to the side. She's got a hand on her own throat, now, refusing to budge. I can't tighten the cords with her hand still there and I rip them free.

She must think she still has a chance. Hope flares to life in her eyes, just for the briefest second.

I can't really tell what's in her eyes after that, as I bring the end of the plug crashing down towards her face.

The prongs strike her in the nose, digging into her cheek, and her head slams back against the floor. They're not sharp enough to do anything, not really. Not to skin alone.

It has to say volumes, that even I don't want to look when the idea occurs to me.

The prongs won't break through skin, but she's still staring up at me. She looks terrified, now. A very far cry from the girl who was asking for my help a minute ago. The look in her eyes hurts, the more I look down at her, and I don't know how much more of that I can really handle.

I don't like being on the receiving end of that.

I plunge the plug directly into her eye.

Her scream is cut off, almost instantly, as I push down as hard as I can. I look to the side. Blood is still dripping out from her stomach, sliding down the side of her face in waves. I didn't know if that would be enough to kill her, but the brain's not far behind, apparently

She was already injured, and she still fought back. One of her hands is still trying to reach for the plug, even as she goes alarmingly still underneath me.

I let myself slide off of her, but make no move to get up. There's still no cannon, even if I can no longer see the rise and fall of her chest. Maybe I just can't hear it down here. There's more blood than I expected, all over her face and coating my hands from when I ripped her even further open than she already was.

For what? I'm not exactly sure.

The door sits in front of me, untouched saved for one of Anya's bloody handprints where she tried to pry it open herself. Still no cannon, but I don't plan on putting a hand near her ever again.

I drag the cords away as I stand up and they skitter across the ground, over her arms. Suddenly they feel a lot heavier, and holding onto them doesn't bring me the comfort that it used to. I just ruined her, and I know all too well what that feels like.

Saying it sucks would be the understatement of the century.

I can't sit here forever, though. Not like she was so clearly planning to, not even if the desire's there.

Like I said, the door's still in front of me.

I still have to keep moving.

* * *

Fun fact: getting hit with that in the eye probably wouldn't kill you, not even close, but hey, what the fuck's realism.

My attempts at making this arena less terrible basically just involve me destroying it piece by piece but at least now there's less space to keep track of. Not that that makes it any better.

Thank you for the reviews last chapter (and to the anon reviewer, who I can't PM, obviously, thank you very much). Friendly reminder to vote in the poll if you didn't do that last week, but I appreciate the interaction even if you didn't review because at least now I know that I have more than like, three consistent readers. So that was nice to know!

Until next time.


	24. A Date With Danger

Arena, Day Four.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

I have zero idea if what anything I'm doing is right.

It sure as shit doesn't seem like it, now does it? I have no idea what I'm doing. I've watched both of my technical allies kill two people since we got in here, and the sick part is that almost feels like a relief. The number could be so much higher than that. They're done a pretty bang-up job of keeping us decently separated, though, with only Isi's frustrated grumbling to really remind me of the fact.

It feels like we're a world away from everyone else, right now. But I know that any corner we turn, any door we open, someone could be on the other side.

Unless it's some of the Careers, or unless something really terrible happens, we're just going to add to the number.

It'll have to be me, eventually. I know it will. Isi didn't make Shirin go out and kill the Eight girl because she didn't want to go out in the rain. If she had been the only one standing there, she would have.

That's mildly terrifying. If she tells me to, I'll have to. It's not going to bug me, per say, but I'd really like it to be my own choice and not hers. I can't refuse her or I'll be next, even if she seems to have slightly more sympathy for me than she does for Shirin.

Of all things, it's that I really didn't see it coming. From the get-go I was pretty sure she had written me off as Camden's stupid, useless District partner. Her eyes only for Camden shtick kinda made her put blinders on for everyone else. Now that she's forced to look at us, take us all in, I think it's freaking her out. Her one constant got offed two minutes in. I think I'd be freaked out too.

"Do you think your sponsors could get us more food?" Shirin asks eventually, and Isi's silence is actually worrying. I won't lie, I'm hungry too, but I think Shirin is even less used to that than I am. If someone were to drop a loaf of bread on our heads right now I'm pretty sure he'd eat the whole thing in one bite, right in front of us, just to be an asshole about it. It really wouldn't surprise me. Maybe thinking of yourself as the all-important one is something I need to start picking up, for my own sake.

"Let's go look for food, then," I suggest.

I don't really care about the rain. It's only a few seconds of hurt, and it's slightly satisfying to see them hurt for a second. To know that they _can_ be hurt.

There's no way Isi's not starving right now, but the look she gives Shirin at the suggestion, rather than pointing it back at me, says I probably shouldn't comment on it. Besides, she gets a free pass. She's the rich kid here. She's never starved a day in her life, never expected that she'd have to. Even when she thought of being in here she probably imagined there'd be enough food to go around. She's already skinny as can be - in a few more days she'll be non-existent.

Oh well. I won't be all that sad about it.

I get to my feet. Yeah, my head spinning because of lack of food isn't great. Water's been in short supply too, because we've found exactly one leaking drainage pipe and I'd rather not ever drink whatever was coming out of that again. At least it was something. Since then we haven't been so lucky.

Every time I do something without her permission I expect to get smacked. The silence really is worrying. If she wasn't making faces at every single little thing we did then I'd be more convinced someone lobotomized her while we were all sleeping.

I really wouldn't put it past Shirin to figure out how.

Her silence says more than her voice ever could, though. Yesterday freaked her out. If I hadn't moved, who knows what would have happened to her. I don't really want to imagine what that thing could have done to her, thanks.

I can't shake the nagging feeling that I made a mistake, either. I could've let her go and who really would've blamed me? It's not like Shirin cared. That thing would have dragged her off, probably never to be seen again, and that would be one thing dealt with. Chances are she wouldn't be coming back to bite me in the ass anytime soon. Sure, I'd still have to deal with Shirin, but for whatever reason I'm a little bit more confident about that.

I really don't think he's a fighter, and I'm not sure he's going to become one any time soon.

Isi tugs her hood up over her head and starts for one of the buildings. The bridge in the opposite direction stretches out into nothing, now, the splintered edges of the glass ending with nothing but a fall below it. We haven't been close to the ground, yet, but it looks like a mess.

We're a mess up here too. I cover myself up and start after her, which leaves Shirin to either sit there or decide he wants to come after us. I don't really care what he does, if he wants to sit there for the rest of his life and wait for someone to decide he's important too.

No one's going to tell me that. I don't _need_ anyone to tell me that.

Right now I just need to figure out how to wiggle my way out of this one.

And no matter what I think of, none of the options seem like particularly nice ones.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

The Fours moved on way too fast.

We know they went down, further down than we've ever spent any time. We could only follow them for so long before we realized that we were running out of ways to go if they found out. I didn't want to chance getting cornered by either of them any more than Parker did, for once.

They don't seem likely to stop any time soon. I sit inside and watch out one of the windows as they emerge from the bottom. It takes a while, through the debris and how messed up the ground is, for them to cross over any of it, but eventually they make their way to the base of the red tower instead. They never come back out. Whether they were looking for something or not, maybe they'll find it.

The longer I watch, the more the ground below seems like water and less solid. It's not really surprising. The rain never quits, save for those few, silent hours at nighttime, but the moon's almost worse. The more I watch the water, though, I wonder when that'll turn out to be a problem. Everything seems to.

Parker's sitting with all of our stuff in front of him in a pile, but doesn't really seem concerned about trying to put it all back up just yet. We didn't manage to take it all down in time anyway. A lot of it we'll have to start over with, start hunting for again. This building seems even emptier than the last.

Parker's still somehow managed to find the few things in it.

It was only one drawer, with three books hardly the size of my palm tucked into the back corner. Since I handed them over to him he's hardly talked to me, so maybe that was a bad idea in hindsight. I should've seen that coming.

He's at least sitting close enough to me that I feel a little bit reassured that he's paying attention. He hasn't looked out the window to follow my gaze in a while, but he's one of the most perceptive people I've ever met.

If something happens, I won't be on my own with it.

After a while I slide down the wall and sit next to him. Whatever he's reading he seems pretty engrossed with it, and I'm not about to stop him. It's the first time that he's looked anything other than stressed, really, and I know all too well what that feeling's like. It's nice to see him not worrying about something for once.

Honestly, it takes me almost falling asleep for him to move. He looks out the window over my shoulder and narrows his eyes, and then looks back to the same page that I'm convinced he's been on for a solid ten minutes now.

I close my eyes, but I feel him do it, again and again.

And yeah, weird habits are weird habits, and I've learned over the past few days that Parker has more than plenty of them. But that's weirder than usual.

He stands up, and I crack open my eyes. He all but sticks his head out of the window to look around, ignoring the rain that is clearly burning his scalp all over. I'll never understand how he manages to ignore that so well.

"Please put your head back in the room," I insist, and he listens, but he still looks confused.

"There were only three."

"Sorry?"

"I— there should be four, if I'm right. But there was only three. There's not even anything on the horizon."

"Can you speak English for the poor common folk down here?" I ask, and he all but drops the book into my lap, sticking his head _back_ out the window. To think that once upon a time he was the smart, sensible one here. I never thought we'd see the day where that turned out to be me. I crack open the book to where I think he was at. It's hardly legible, the pages faded and yellowed, and I squint.

"Can you just explain this to me before I go blind?"

Parker sighs, a little irritably, although for whatever reason I don't think it's directed at me. "It's ways that the world was prophesied to end. You know, a solar eclipse, widespread war, things like that. It said there were four horsemen."

I very slowly put the book down, back on the windowsill, and stand up next to him. He's pointing out the window, still looking out towards the horizon like he's expecting to see something that wasn't there before.

"There were four," he insists again. "White - pestilence. You even said a lot of the white tower looked like a hospital, right? The red one was war, and the black one was famine. There's nothing in here, right? We keep expecting to see something on one of the shelves, find food or something, and there's nothing here."

Jesus christ, _what_? Did he just figure this out on his own? I blink out the window again. The white tower is all over the ground in pieces but the other two are still standing, the same colors he just said, like he made them be there in the first place. There was no telling looking at this arena from the get-go what exactly it was. Even through the past few days there hasn't been a single explanation I could think of.

"There were four," he repeats again, too much like a broken record. "Death was supposed to be the last one—"

And, then, finally, it hits me.

"Oh my god," I breathe, and stride right out into the hallway, like I'm convinced it's going to appear just because I'm thinking about it. I stand there for a long while, but Parker makes no move to follow. I see the realization dawn into his eyes as well. I knew I shouldn't have thought it, shouldn't have called it the actual version of the grim reaper, even if it was in my head.

"The shadow," is all he says, and I nod, a little helplessly.

"Death's already here."

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

Everything hurts.

It's not great waking up to that thought, but I guess, in hindsight, it's better than just being straight up dead and not having any thoughts at all. The pulsing pain in my head seems to be trying it's hardest to reach down throughout the rest of my body, even to the tips of my fingers.

Right. The shelf. Should've known that being the last thing I set eyes on couldn't have been good. I reach a hand up and instead of coming in contact with what should be my not-so intact head, my fingers brush against what feels like an awful lot like a layer of bandaging, across my temple and forehead.

If this whole situation is a list of things that don't make sense, than that has to be number one.

"Hey."

Nevermind. That voice is number one.

I don't move. That's not Farren, which means it's someone else that I don't know, and that can't be good? Can it?

"I'm— you're okay. I'm not going to hurt you."

Well, that's certainly a relief, even if whoever's voice that is sounds about as confident as a mouse and I don't think I ever had to worry about that in the first place. I try to roll over and pain spikes through my head, and it mildly feels like someone's trying to drive nails through my skull. Not a feeling I ever thought I'd have to deal with, and it's not all that great.

I can at least make her out, though, crouched in the corner. My eyes may be a little foggy but it would be hard not to. She's eyeing me warily, at any rate.

"You're - I don't remember, to be honest. My head hurts."

"Kelsea," she offers. "You probably have a pretty bad concussion. I found you at the other end of the hallway. You were bleeding pretty badly."

I can feel it, the blood all over my face. Just when I thought I had finally gotten over the hurdle of there being blood all over my face and coming out of me at any given time, here we are again.

"Thanks?" I try eventually, and she nods.

I hardly even remember getting down here. Just opening the door and the shelf and none of my own footsteps even really registering in my brain, just that sudden blinding pain in my head and then nothing. I was just running without a thought in the world and my body wasn't ready for that yet. It gave up on me. Every sudden movement reignites that pain again.

"You probably shouldn't move too fast," she says. "You were out for almost an entire day. I was starting to think—"

"That I wouldn't wake up?" I guess, and she nods again. So she's what, been sitting here the entire time just watching me, after she dragged me off and bandaged my head? Not exactly the type of thing I expected to happen to me, but I guess I'll take it. I could've passed out and she could've killed me and I would have been none the damn wiser to any of it.

"I'm sorry about all the blood," she continues. "I wanted to wash it off but I really don't have that much water left."

That level of generosity would weird me out, if I had time to really think about it before I looked down and saw the blood all over my hands. It's nearly up to my wrists, flaking thick between my fingers and crusted so far under my nails it'll be a miracle if I ever get rid of it.

"Fuck," I manage. "Fucking— dammit."

There it is. Literally nothing else will sum it up better than that, I don't think. There are no words to describe it any better, at least not in my vocabulary. I can feel Kelsea staring at me, even when I squeeze my eyes shut to avoid looking at it. I really don't need the reminder, of Casper ripping the scalpel out of his own throat and of Farren screaming, hysterically.

The scalpel's gone.

I realize that, distantly, and open my eyes. I know I had it in my hand, before I got my head cracked open. There's nothing in my pockets though either and it's nowhere in sight.

Kelsea creeps a little closer and offers her hand, palm up. The scalpel's sitting in it, as covered in blood as the rest of my hand is.

"You can have it back," she says. "I just didn't want you freaking out and. You know."

I definitely know. I can't say I blame her. Whatever scene she walked in on it definitely wasn't pretty, and it probably didn't take her long to put two and two together. I can't fault her for not wanting to be the next one. For all she knew I was completely off my rocker, ready to stab the next person I saw.

"You can keep it."

She looks surprised but grabs her backpack and quickly tucks the scalpel away. She knows I can see it, clear as day. If she really wanted to be secret about it she could've hidden it somewhere where I couldn't see. Her small, missing ally aside, she at least seems to be doing better than me. I'm the one that just panic stabbed one of my allies, killed him, and then subsequently ran away and left all of our supplies several floors up.

Kelsea doesn't move as I use the wall to shove myself into the best sitting position I'm going to manage right about now. I can tell she wants to help.

I definitely don't deserve this level of generosity, not because of the fact that we exchanged three sentences back in training.

"You don't have to stay here," I tell her, and instead of getting up and walking out she shuffles a little closer, backpack in tow, and sits down cross-legged in front of me. It's still hard to look at the blood all over my hands, to stare at it and try not to live back there in that moment. I know I can't do that, there's no point to it, but I want to.

"Do you want me to go?" Kelsea asks, a little hesitantly. Just from that alone I don't think whatever happened to her ally was good. She doesn't really look like she wants to go, blood aside, and to be honest I don't really want her to leave.

Left alone I think my head will take over anything else, and I really don't want it to.

I shake my head. She smiles, and while it looks uncertain I think I can handle that. Uncertain is worrying but it's better than knowing nothing at all.

Right now, I feel pretty close to that.

* * *

 **Rodrik Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

It literally feels like we're those two, dumb people in a horror movie who walk around calling the killer's name.

When we both get murdered in two minutes, though, I don't think I'll be surprised in the slightest.

I don't know if Celia is waving the flashlight around so violently because it's helping her see or she plans on hitting something with it the second the opportunity presents itself. It's kind of giving me whiplash. There are spots blinking all over my vision but it's really the only thing keeping me from leaning forward and literally holding onto her because I can't see.

To be honest, I think I'd rather be holding onto her. I can't see anyway, with her pointing it in every direction that exists.

There's already water splashing around our boots with every step. The rain is getting too hard to control.

"We shouldn't have come down here."

"Why not?"

I don't have an answer for that. I kinda wish I had one, though. Even though there's no chance of me dragging her back up the stairs now that she's made her mind up maybe we could at least take a half-blind step in the right direction. She may dig her heels in even further but at least getting her to decide things rationally for once would help. I guess the rational half is all on me now.

She's still a few steps ahead of me when she stops, at the juncture between two hallways. I nearly walk right into her back, leaning around her shoulder to look myself.

God, when will they stop with the creepy red lights? It's too much.

"Stay here for a second," Celia instructs, sounding a lot like she's offering me a way out of this, and then takes off down the hallway towards said obnoxious red light. Way too quickly, if you ask me.

"Why?" I ask after her, just this shy of too loud, and I wince. She waves me away.

"If I start screaming—

"Come after you?"

"I was going to say run in the opposite direction. Are you stupid?"

Apparently. How is she calling me stupid, when she's the one walking off towards something undeniably creepy on her own? Does she think she's immune to weird stuff like that? Clearly the plague didn't think so. I watch her slow to a halt in front of the door it's coming from though, reaching forward cautiously with one hand to push it open more. She freezes, only for a second, and then takes a step into the room, disappearing.

There's no sudden screaming, which is nice, but that doesn't stop me from starting after her.

I don't really know what I'm expecting. Despite the lack of outward reaction she still hesitated, just for a second. That wouldn't bug anyone else.

It really, really bugs me.

Unfortunately for me, when I step right into the doorway, I know exactly why she hesitated.

Celia's crouched down, leaning over a body, and it hurts to breathe. It hurts even more to admit that there's no point, to Celia leaning over her like there's any chance at all that she's not dead.

It looks like Anya's been dead for a while now.

Celia looks up at me in silence. There's blood all over abdomen and face, her right eye seemingly gone. None of the blood transfers over to Celia's hands. Definitely been a while, then. Distantly, I realize that it's probably a miracle, that nothing's messed with her body yet, if she's been down here this long. I thought maybe that one cannon yesterday could be attributed to the falling building, that maybe someone hadn't been so lucky. At least I was half right with that one.

Celia gets back to her feet and steps over Anya's body, making her way to the door on the opposite side. I hadn't even noticed it.

"Help me with this."

She probably wouldn't need help with it, not even on a bad day, but she doesn't drop my gaze. Looking down hurts, and she can tell that just as much as I feel it. The body below me, it doesn't feel like Anya at all. There's no correlation to the thing at my feet and the girl that struggled so violently in my arms that second day. There isn't one at all.

I very carefully skirt around her and join Celia at the door. She's already spinning the handle and I lean forward to grab a hold of it while she shoves it from the other side. It's heavy, completely solid metal, and Celia doesn't even let it open for more than a few inches before she's shoving what little of her head she can get through the hole.

"Holy fuck."

She waits another two seconds before she's forcing her entire body through the gap, not even waiting for me to finish from the other side. If it was bad I'd like to think she at least would've waited, that she wouldn't look almost excited. Excited isn't exactly a word I thought we could feel right about now.

But like I said, that's what I thought. There's rainwater soaking through the laces of my boots and Anya's body is hardly a foot behind me, and suddenly I _understand_.

It's an armory. As close to one as I've ever seen, and I've spent years of my life at the Academy. There's weapons hanging off all four walls, everything that would be in the Cornucopia in a normal year. All hidden down here, where it was almost impossible to find unless you really looked.

Celia starts laughing.

It feels wrong, to say that her laughing almost makes me come close, but it does. This has been down here the whole time. I can't help but look back at Anya's body, just one more time. She was so _close_.

"Rory."

I turn, and Celia practically hurls a bow at me, still grinning. Her face softens a little bit as she offers me the quiver, too, filled with what looks like a never-ending supply of arrows. Even though my expression must be betraying me right now it still makes me feel better, to put both over my shoulder. It makes me feel a fraction safer, more like myself. These things are more a part of me than most.

"There's stuff missing," I point out. A few empty spaces on the wall, empty holds where other weapons were.

"Someone else was down here. Probably—"

She doesn't have to finish the sentence. Whoever killed Anya is probably very well-armed by now. Besides that there's really not that much missing. Anyone who discovered this place probably would have taken as much as they could physically carry. We may very well be the second ones in this place. Celia looks like she just opened a birthday present, as she pulls a crossbow down off the wall and then a sword. I start collecting knives, because it at least gives me something to do, distracts me from the real situation. Someone's body may be outside and the feeling of being watched may be stronger than ever, but this is progress.

"I don't think we can stay here," I say quietly, looking around. There's nothing else in here, save for the four walls, and yet it somehow feels wrong. Like those walls could come crashing down on us any second. Besides, the water is still an inch or two deep on the floor. With how hard the rain's coming down it won't take long for it to get deeper.

Celia nods in agreement, still looking around.

"Do you think between the two of us we could figure out who's still alive?" Celia asks, after a moment. There's something almost mischievous in those words, but that doesn't scare me anymore. Not like it used to. There's nothing to fear with her, I've quickly realized.

"Why?"

She pulls a spear off the wall and turns back to me, raising an eyebrow. "I think I got an idea."

I don't even have to ask her what it is, as she walks a few feet to the left and grabs a mace too. So many things click into place, right then. Before long this place will be gone, taken back by the arena and it's rain. No room for other people.

And well, I was the one all for the idea in the first place, wasn't I?

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

I hear something about the same time I get to the opposite end of the hallway.

Dimara should be just next door, and sure enough she emerges out into the hallway and stops right in front of the door, shooting me a look. I shrug.

Whoever it is, we can probably kill them. Homemade mace aside we're probably stronger together than most people are in this arena no matter their alliances. Not that the mace doesn't make me feel great on the inside, because it does, but that just gives us an extra advantage.

I just wanted some extra nails. Why couldn't the noise have waited until I found a few more?

After a moment, there's another noise, like a door opening and closing. Dimara holds a hand out.

Alright. Not moving.

And then, "Dimara?"

Well, that could certainly pose a problem. It's not Celia. Oeshe, then? It has to be. No one else is going to refer to her with a little bit of hope, like they're actually happy to see her. Anyone sensible would probably run screaming in the opposite direction, and that's including the people that don't even know what she did to Tavian.

Dimara takes a few steps forward, out of my view, and I edge closer to the doorway, straining to hear.

"Where's Celia?"

Come to think of it, that's a good question. I know they ran off from the Cornucopia together and Dimara knows it too, because I told her everything. Celia grabbed the bag after she killed the Nine girl and they took off while they still had the chance. The silence on Oeshe's end continues to stretch on thinner and thinner and I can feel the tension floating through the air, even though I'm not able to view it myself.

"Is she dead?"

We don't know that either. The recap hasn't exactly been easy to keep track of, with everything else going on. For all we know, Oeshe doesn't have the faintest clue either. Unless she killed her. That could be the only way she knows for sure. Whatever Oeshe's saying, she's not talking very loudly. Everything is hushed, hardly audible, and I have no hope in hell of hearing her. All I can focus on are Dimara's footsteps, getting further and further away from me. Still getting closer to her.

That's not good in any universe.

I have everything, all of our supplies. Oeshe knows what she's capable of doing completely unarmed; she helped her do it the first time.

"I was scared, Dimara," she explains. That's the first thing I'm really able to hear. "I didn't know what to do. I just ran. Things just went downhill so fast."

That doesn't help at all. Why does everyone have to speak so cryptically?

"So you killed her."

"Dimara, just hear me out for a second, please. I didn't do it."

We both know telling Dimara that is more likely to backfire than not. Now they're probably too close, but never in the personal sense. It was always Celia and her that were the closest, since day one. Practically inseparable. Everyone saw that. And Oeshe's probably already said too much, none of it what Dimara wanted to hear. Nothing that I really wanted to hear, either. I never wanted Celia to end up dead for her choice in allies.

That's exactly why we all tried to stay away from each other in the first place.

I don't hear what she says next, but I hear Dimara, clear as day, and that's all I need.

"It doesn't really matter. Not right now."

I lean out of the doorway, just in time to see Oeshe's eyes widen as her gaze lands on me, and I toss the mace down the hallway.

I don't even think Dimara was expecting that but I see her stretch out to grab it at the same time Oeshe does, probably hoping she'll be quicker. Blood drips down from where both of their hands collide with it, the nails and glass hitting home on someone, but eventually Dimara comes away with it. I think they're both bleeding if I'm being honest, as I take a step out into the hallway.

Dimara doesn't want my interference. It takes a hell of a lot to remind myself of that.

Oeshe earned that seven for her eagerness, not for her all-around skill. And right now it's blatantly obvious. Dimara shoves her back and I can't help but see myself and Camden, two seconds before he went over, but there's nowhere for Oeshe to go. Not really even a chance at running, and even Camden had that, futile as it was.

The mace hits home, right between her ribcage and her heart, and Oeshe screams.

She collapses right in front of Dimara's feet, and neither of them move. I half-expect her to try and crawl away, try and pull herself in the opposite direction, but she doesn't. She stares upwards and despite the scream, despite the blood rapidly staining the front of her shirt, doesn't even really look terrified like everyone else would.

"I didn't kill her," she says again, and Dimara's face twists. It doesn't matter whether she believes her or not.

It's never about what we believe.

"This was a mistake from the get-go," is all Dimara says, and all hope flies out the window. If it was ever there to begin with.

Oeshe's still looking up at her when Dimara buries the mace in the juncture between her shoulder and neck.

She hits the floor, already limp by the time Dimara rips it out. I don't know what to do other than stand there, mostly useless, and Dimara stands there and looks down at her. That escalated a little quickly, I would reckon, but who am I to talk?

The cannon finally goes off and Dimara pushes her hair back from her forehead, a streak of blood left behind on her forehead.

"Nine out of ten," I inform her, as she turns back to slap the mace in my open palm. She leans down to wrestle the bag off of Oeshe's shoulders, craning her neck back up to look at me.

"What's the missing point?"

"For not letting me get involved."

She mutters something under her breath as she gets the bag free. Either she took it from Celia and booked it or she took it from someone else, which isn't that great either. God only knows what she had to do to them to get it without any repercussions, either.

"Do you really think she killed her?"

"No."

"Okay?" That's certainly not the answer I was expecting. "Any particular reason why then, or?"

"Had to happen eventually," she says. "Besides. Don't think I ever enjoyed killing my District partner to save her ass."

Well, that's a justifiable reason if I've ever heard one. There's still a part of my brain that hasn't even wrapped around that fact yet, and we're four days in. Maybe Dimara has been thinking it the entire time and I've just never known. There's a lot I don't know, if I'm being honest. Who's dead and who's not. Who could still be out there looking for us.

At least tonight I'll know what face will be looking down at me in the sky.

* * *

Happy 100k, everyone.

I know generally speaking that everyone I kill hurts, but like. This one _hurt_ , alright? And judging by the results of the poll that I'm still not putting up, for whatever reason, I think a lot of you will be inclined to agree with me. And for that I apologize! But at least I finally had mercy on the people who still didn't have a goddamn clue about whatever is going on in this arena.

And I said this to someone again but I'll reiterate it: you trying to keep track of where everyone is? Not worth it. Teleportation's a thing, I'm telling you.

Until next time.


	25. Beyond Repair

Arena, Early Morning, Day Five.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

There's no option but to leave Anya's blood all over my hands.

The minuscule amount of water I've found at this point is probably keeping me alive and stopping me from collapsing face-first onto the ground. After what my first dash through the rain led to, the journey down into the basement, I'm not exactly keen on going back outside and waiting for it to start back up again. It has to be any minute now. The moon is starting to fade, just enough that I've started to realize that means it's almost over.

I don't know how long I can go without food. Probably much longer than I've already current done, but that doesn't mean I'm exactly willing to test that theory.

It just makes me so tired, wondering. Wondering how much longer I'll be in here and where food could be. There's too many things to think about and too much time to think about it all, so much so that I feel like it's consuming me from the inside out.

Then again, that might just be my stomach threatening to collapse if I don't put something in it soon.

The only bonus, really, is the weapons.

Weak as I may be walking around, the weapons at my waist and back make me feel so much stronger. Too many knives to really count, shoved into every space I could find, and two hatchets. It's not food but it still feels pretty damn good.

Somewhere along the way I made the unconscious decision to let the electrical cords go.

I don't even really know why. I could've carried them for much longer, tired as I may be. They've already proven to be useful once.

All I could see though were Anya's frantic hands, wide eyes, struggling frantically as I tried to choke the life out of her, and it felt far too much like watching Thane's hands on my own skin.

I know I'm not that person. This is for nothing but survival. Whatever games Thane plays, they have to be for his own sick amusement. I'm not enjoying any of this, like I know he does. That still doesn't stop me from feeling sick about it all the same. I'm torn, between never wanting to feel that again and wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible so I can stop feeling it. The quicker everyone else goes the quicker I can just forget about all of this.

It also means I have to go back home and deal with everything, but after what I've done in here, that feels like nothing in comparison. Nothing out there can faze me, not anymore.

At least I hope so.

I don't think my family will blame me either. Jericho certainly won't. I can already imagine the look on Thane's face the second I step back onto the train's platform, the leering look on his face as he takes all of me back in.

Hopefully that's the last time I ever have to see that face again.

My legs are starting to feel weak, sluggish. I lean back against the wall, and the blood all over my hands matches the splatters on the wall behind me, blending into one. The moon is coloring everything to be the same, trapping me in that eerie light. It's starting to feel like I've been trapped in that light for a while, just looking for a way out, and there isn't one.

A pinging starts up down the hallway.

I blink and lean off the wall. It's near the stairwell. I haven't heard that noise yet, not personally, but I've heard it so many times over the years that hope actually strikes me in the chest, more painful than anything else I've experienced.

The parachute floats through the window just as I poke my head into the last room, landing with a light flutter on the floor. Probably someone telling me to get up off my ass and stop feeling sorry for myself, because no one else is going to. No one else is going to care, either, except for my family back home. They can't do anything from there.

I unwrap the parachute and a full water bottle comes tumbling out, followed by what appears to be nearly a full loaf of bread.

I never thought I'd say this in my life, but the sight of it nearly makes me cry.

This is what I've been reduced to. Feeling my eyes burn and a lump rise in the back of my throat because of a loaf of bread and water, sent by god knows who from god knows where, and I'll probably never have the privilege to know. It could have been anything to use in the future. Medicine, or another weapon, or even a note trying to help me out, but it was this. And that means more than I ever thought I could.

It was exactly what I needed right now, and someone out there knew it.

I sit down with a thud on the floor in the empty room, suddenly without a care in the world. The door is wide open and anyone could walk in if they thought to. My weapons clang along the tiled floor as well, though, reminding me that whoever tries it is going to get one rude awakening. Not exactly a good thought to settle down to, as I uncap the bottle and tear a chunk of the bread off. My hands are shaking, and whether that's the hunger or the emotions all bubbling up at once I'm not exactly sure.

"Thanks," I say eventually, to the empty room, and thankfully the waver in my voice isn't all that loud.

Someone out there will hear it and know I'm thankful. Maybe something like this would disgust me normally, being so grateful for something that should've so easily been given to me in the first place, but right now I'm aware of just how little I'm being given. Of how much this really is, in the grand scheme of things.

I'll take that. I'll take the little victories, whether I hate them or not.

* * *

 **Farren Laboy, 17 years, District Six Female.**

* * *

I haven't seen anyone or anything for what feels like weeks.

I know it hasn't been that long. Just over three days. But it feels like that, it really does. It feels like there's not a single other person in the arena but me, even though there are cannons going off. There are people out there, still killing. I know that. Still faces in the sky every night.

Vance is still somewhere out there.

At least I've managed to do more than sit and wallow in my own misery until someone has the mercy to take me out.

The sword at my belt feels like nothing more than just something else that I shouldn't have possession of. The backpack too, because all of it's contents don't even really seem to matter. I finished off the last of the crackers last night and hardly have any water left. I knew I'd have to go looking for some eventually, but that involved mustering the energy to finally move.

I could only stay in the vicinity around Casper's body for so long, like any second he was going to come back.

There was only so long I could let myself sit there and wonder how so many things had gone so wrong.

I think that's why I haven't seen anything at all. Whatever's going on in this arena was content to leave me alone, to mentally process things without screwing with me even more. Now I don't think I'm so fortunate. The moon combined with the fog all along the floor and all of the shadows is enough to throw me off, and I haven't even been walking for ten minutes.

The shadows have been trying to form concrete shapes for a while now, crawling up the walls and lurking around doorways, but never getting any higher than my waist. The first time it happens I stutter to a halt, but I can't stand there forever. The shadows keep moving on and on and I don't really have any choice but to follow them. They're not hurting me and it doesn't really seem like they're going to.

I also didn't think it seemed like Vance was going to hurt Casper, no matter how nervous he looked, and he still did it anyway.

The first time the shadows approach my height it almost looks like the shape of a person, something tall and curved jutting out forwards before I take a step forward directly into it. It dissipates and floats away again, continuing down the hallway. An icy chill runs through my entire body, all the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up.

If they wanted to hurt me they would. Hell, if something in here wanted me dead they'd have done it in the three days I hardly moved, except to escape the building. It would've been the prime opportunity, when I was doing nothing but crying and trying to pull myself back together before something got me first.

It's still up for debate about whether I want something to really get me or not. At first following the shadows wasn't even really my own choice. They were in front and behind, every direction I looked. The more I've followed them, though, the more they've disappeared. Now I'm wondering if it's something more, some unconscious desire for something to happen to me.

I just want to feel something other than misery.

There's only one more room before I'll have to start ascending the stairs to the next floor. The shadow stops at the doorway and grows again, the most solid I've seen it. It doesn't even have a face, no distinct edges other than the hood cloaking it's face, the scythe stretching almost the entire length of the hallway.

For some reason, that doesn't scare me at all.

Nothing can be worse than what I saw three nights ago, all the blood and losing both my allies in one fell swoop. It would take all of two seconds for this thing to run me right through, and I don't even think I really care. It would be looking directly right at me, if it had eyes to see with. Even then it still feels like it's searching something out, looking for something, and I don't know if what it's looking for is inside me at all.

It doesn't feel like there's much in me at this point other than adrenaline.

"You wanna kill me, go for it," I offer tiredly, and the thing is only there for another second before it vanishes, the shadows disappearing out the windows and under the cracks beneath doorways.

I enter the room.

At first glance there doesn't seem to be much in here, except a few drawers and cupboards, a chair to sit down in. I've been sitting for long enough, though.

There's only one drawer that's still closed, the others hanging off of their hinges or spilling out of the woodwork, and I wrench it open.

Inside are three granola bars, sealed tight. I pull them out, almost not believing they're real for a moment, and shove them in my pocket before anything in here, _anyone_ , can think to come in here and take them from me. Something like that is precious, even if they're so small they can all fit in my pocket. This is probably more than most people have found.

I'm about to close the drawer when something rattles from the back of it and I reach my hand in. My fingers wrap around something metal, cool to the touch, and emerge with a pair of scissors. They look brand new, unlike everything else in the arena, either covered with blood or grime or rusted to the point of no return.

Not exactly what I was expecting.

It's something you'd see at home, tucked into the back of the drawer the same way they were here. I look back over my shoulder, but the shadow is still gone.

It wanted me to come in here.

So maybe it wanted them to have them.

* * *

 **Shirin Azami, 17 years, District Three Male.**

* * *

Even with the white tower gone, too much of this entire arena still reminds me of a hospital.

It ranges from one extreme to the other. Either it smells like rotted wood, the decay of bodies and blood all over the walls, or it smells _too_ clinical. All chemical scent and cool air. When a breeze goes through the place it almost reminds me of a morgue, cold but not cold enough.

So many dead, but not enough.

I watch the moon disappear back behind the clouds, and the world goes dark once again. Seconds after that the rain starts up again. I keep waiting for it to stop, for something to break the gears that keep on turning. Something has to give eventually. The tower falling proved that not everything in the arena is set in stone, but it seems like the sky is here to stay.

With everyone being forced closer together there has to be other people around. The issue seems to be we can't find any of them.

It's not really an issue for me, anyway. People have been dying just fine and dandy, save for two, without intervention from us. It doesn't really matter if I have to do it or not, as long as the numbers keep trickling down day by day.

Isi's been kicking things over for a while now, like she's waiting for food to appear where a broken chair had been previously laying. I get it. We're all hungry. Isi had seemed so convinced that we'd be taken care of no matter what the conditions were, but the truth is we're not doing enough. Not finding enough people and not drawing it out long enough, at the same time. They're not going to give us things we don't deserve.

I think, no matter everything else, I do deserve them. I didn't have to go out into the rain and kill that girl. I could've walked away, let one of them do it. Isi cornering the Twelve boy in a stairwell, telling him everything was fine, that's all her. Not an ounce of that was a show. When I walked out onto that roof I had no intentions of playing along. No use in drawing out someone's suffering, not when they're as good as dead anyway.

Isi kicks over something else so hard that it nearly rolls into my legs.

Something lands on the windowsill.

Tanis had been standing the closest to it and she recoils. It's a bird. Big, whatever it is. Almost looks like a vulture, except even mangier, if that's even possible. It cocks its head and looks at all three of us.

Okay, I knew we were hungry. I've been feeling it for a while. But I didn't think we were so hungry that things outside of the other tributes were going to look eager to hunt us down. This thing looks like it's waiting for one of us to fall over and drop dead. Looking for it's next convenient meal. There's another one in the sky, too, circling rapidly. Waiting to descend.

And then Isi starts walking towards it.

Tanis has already backpedaled halfway towards me and Isi passes her on the first step, headed right for the window.

"What are you doing?" Tanis asks, only slightly alarmed. Isi's the skinniest of us all, and even if that's not entirely hunger I still wouldn't put it past this thing to try it's luck with something that's still breathing.

It would probably have a better shot than she would, knives be damned.

Speaking of knives, she's got one clutched tightly in her hand, creeping closer and closer. Eventually she reaches her empty hand out and it's eyes lock onto that instantly, onto the fingers that inch closer to it's face with every passing second. She's pushing her luck here, about to lose her fingers if it's generous enough to only go for that and not her face.

She swings the knife and the vulture squawks and drops back off the balcony, wings spreading out. It looks huge, then, and her knife passes through the spot it had just been sitting a second too late. It wheels away, higher and higher into the sky until it's nothing more than a pinprick far above us, and Isi swears.

"Would've appreciated some help," she snaps. She's getting more irritable by the day, and I can't tell if it has something to do with almost getting dragged off or not.

"We'd need a fire if you actually managed to kill it," I remind her. No matches, no flint. No anything, really, unless she's suddenly a fire starting god. Somehow I'm doubting that.

"I don't see you doing anything," she says, like she didn't make me step out onto a roof to kill someone not long ago. There's no point to arguing at the end of the day, because I know where I stand, and where she'll end up. Dead, probably, mauled to death by a vulture because she thinks she's invincible through almost everything, and we all know she isn't.

Whatever happens, when it happens, it's going to be ugly.

She won't deserve whatever happens to her. No matter what she does no one's going to wind up deserving that.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

Somehow the black tower winds up being the worst of all.

Sure, the white may have given us the plague, but it at least had stuff worthwhile to look at, and the red tower gave us weapons after we spent an hour stumbling around in the dark. I thought staying near the weapons would be pushing our luck. It seemed like coming back to this one was the logical thing to do.

Apparently not.

Apparently I should've just let logic fly out the window.

I think it's amusing Rory, at least, which should somehow be offensive but isn't. Irritation is doing wonders to my brain at the moment and every time I express that by kicking the wall or even just saying it he smiles. He doesn't have the right to smile anymore. It's not funny. I know he's no better off than I am in the hunger department and I don't think being sick right from the get-go helped that at all.

The next corner we turn, another hallway of almost absolutely nothing in front of us, and Rory at least has the frame of mind to look sheepish about it when I turn around and catch him smiling again.

The thing is, I can still see the expression on his face in the moments between the smiles, and it's kind of heart-breaking. I knew as soon as I saw Anya that he wouldn't want to see it, that he wouldn't want to know at all. I didn't stand back up fast enough to stop him. In hindsight, if I had stopped him, if I had the frame of mind to keep him out of that room, maybe we wouldn't even be here. Definitely weaponless, for one.

He's holding onto that bow like a lifeline. For something I've seen him use it still looks too foreign.

He knows about the Nine girl. There was no reason to hide that. He didn't care, and he would never ask me not to kill someone, just like I don't think I can ask the opposite of him. We're on different ends of the spectrum.

But if it comes down to it, if there actually comes a time when I need him to do something, I don't know what I'll say.

And I don't know if I'd want him to anyway.

It's stupid. I never thought I'd be standing there fully expecting an ally to let me die if it comes down to it because I don't think he'll be able to save me. He'll want to, I think, but do I see him willingly killing someone else to get me through to the other side? Absolutely not.

It's the same way he's not going to save himself at the end of the day either.

At this point he's only talking to fill the silence between our conversations, because I think he's wondering about it just as much as I am.

"Are you actually okay?" I ask him eventually, and he stares at me. Yeah, we've definitely passed the point of me pretending not to give a shit, and we both know it.

"Should I not be?"

I shrug, and he keeps looking at me funny. "Are _you_ okay?"

"Nope," I respond, too easily, and that look is literally never going to leave his face. I'm convinced. That's the last thing he expected to hear, and it's the only thing that still feels like the truth. I really never thought I'd end up here, wondering who was going to be on the opposite end of the knife when I was so convinced I had this locked down from the beginning.

And most of all I hate him looking at me like that, like everything he thought he knew has been turned inside out.

"Why Rory?"

"What?"

Anything to distract from whatever this is. It seems to have done a sufficient job of throwing him off, at any rate.

"Why Rory?" I repeat. "Why do you not like Rodrik?"

I feel like I understand the look on his face all too well, because it's the same level of trouble that I'm pretty sure was written all over my own face just a minute ago. For some reason, feeling bad about cutting off our previous conversation is still better than the feeling of being trapped under a magnifying glass.

He still doesn't look like he knows how to get the words out. "Rodrik was my dad's name. Is."

"I thought you said your dad was dead."

"Step-dad," he explains. "Well, sorta. Him and my mom never actually got married. He died a few years after my little brother was born. They think he had cancer. So I guess technically they're my half-siblings. Never really thought of them like that though."

"So what happened to your dad, then?" It doesn't even feel right asking it. He's already looking at the ground, eyebrows furrowed. Maybe he's really never tried to explain any of this to an outside party, let alone someone he's spent only a few days with. I probably don't have any right to know, if I'm being honest, and there's nothing but genuine curiosity driving me now.

"You don't have to tell me."

"Nah, it's fine," he says. His voice doesn't sound fine. "My mom was really young when she had me. All of us, really, but me especially. I guess when my dad found out he kinda panicked and ran for the hills. I get it. Would freak me out too. I think she named me after him hoping that if she did he would come back or something."

And to think I thought I had it bad. Sure I may not have a dad anymore but at least I knew him. I may have problems with my mom, even more with my sister, but that's more than a lot of people get. Even I'm aware of that.

"He sounds like a dick," I say, because I don't know what else would even make sense. At least that's the truth.

Finally, he looks up, and now he just looks sad. "Wouldn't know. I met him for the first time at the goodbyes."

There it is. The one thing that he says that almost but not quite sucks all the air out of my lungs. It's not my right to assume what's happened in his life, but I think a part of me was hoping to hear anything but that. Come to think of it, I saw a man at the goodbyes too. That's why I asked him about his dad in the first place, in the Capitol, but he had said that it wasn't him and we had moved on. It was too easy to assume it was his uncle, a family friend. Besides, who in their right mind would assume what he just said to me?

"I don't even think he knew what he was doing when he walked in," he explains. "I just think he heard the name and thought it would be a good idea and— nope. Definitely wasn't."

Seventeen years later, of course it wasn't.

"I'm sorry." I think for the first time in my life I actually sound it, too, instead of just forcing the words out. Rory shakes his head and yep, I'm definitely never calling him Rodrik again, because the first and only time I ever did that is now creeping up again and reminding me of how easily I just threw it around despite what he wanted.

"I'm gonna hug you," I announce, and if I had the frame of mind to smack myself I would right now. God, why did I announce it? He looks surprised, which is still a nice change from downright sad. It's quelled pretty quickly, though, when I step forward and actually do it. For all my talk I still don't think he was actually expecting me to.

Hugging him feels like the first time that I haven't felt close to complete shit, even if he's just hugging me back to save me from dying of sheer awkwardness. I really shouldn't have announced it.

"Should've told me you were fucked up too," I say into his shoulder, and he huffs out a laugh. At least he can still do that.

That should not even be something we joke about, but I don't know what else to say. I don't know how we ended up here, and I don't know how to get back to where we started.

And I don't know if I want to, either.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

All the blood in this place is really starting to freak me out.

I thought I was over it, but the blood stains only seem to get bigger and bigger as time goes on, like they're leaking through the walls. That very thought is concerning enough, and the more time I spend on my own looking at them the worse it gets.

Vance is still unsteady and I've never wandered very far, just enough to make sure that no one's coming too close and that nothing's changed. The missing building on the other side of the arena was concerning enough to Vance when he found out; I don't want to drop any more surprises on him. It doesn't quite feel right, being the one out here on my own, but I feel like it's made me stand a little taller.

The stairwell is still empty. I don't know what I'd do if it wasn't. Run, probably, and not very far. I think Vance is the runner here, because it's certainly not me.

That still doesn't stop me from making slow progress down to the next floor. Just enough to make sure we still have our own space. If someone _is_ down here, well. Five days is a lot longer than I expected to last, if I'm being perfectly honest.

The thing is, sometimes slow progress is bad. I used to think it couldn't hurt me at all, didn't want to ever change my mind at the fact, but I've realized it now.

Something clangs above me. Maybe a door against a frame, something slipping of a shelf. My brain has enough clarity to process that it's probably, most definitely not a person, and I panic anyway. My heart spikes and I twist my head to look upwards.

My foot slips on the step.

I'm still looking upwards when I feel my foot miss what I was so sure was solid ground beneath my feet. It's only the last second of realization that saves me, when I have the frame of mind to tuck my head as close as I can against my chest as my body practically hurtles sideways.

I hit the stairs, and it hurts but not bad enough. It's my legs, still twisted awkwardly, that get me in the end.

My shoulder smashes into the concrete, and fiery pain snaps all through my ankle.

I feel the scream escape before I can stop it, not that I even think I'd be able to. It only takes one more half roll before I hit the next landing, tears already burning at my eyes. It feels like everything from my right ankle down should be should _gone,_ or on fire, and reaching down to touch it somehow makes it worse. I can't push my leg all the way out without wanting to scream again.

There's no way it's not broken. I've never broken a bone in my life but I saw Sammy's face when he fell and broke his wrist six months ago and it feels exactly like that right now.

The stairwell door above me hits the wall, and the panic doesn't even have a chance to rise over the pain before Vance's head pops over the railing.

It has to say a lot, that even his footsteps coming down towards me feels like it hurts when I know it possibly can't. He crouches down in front of me, hands stretched out cautiously, and even though I can hardly see I know he looks concerned.

Funny. I don't think he's been able to move this fast yet. Gotta give him some credit.

"Please don't touch it," I manage, and his hands stop in mid-air.

"What, leg? Ankle?"

"Ankle."

He swears under his breath. Apparently there's no such thing as a win for either of us, not in the near future at least. I'm still surprised he's as coherent and confident at being upright as he is.

"I'm gonna have to take the boot off to look," he says, slowly. "And if it starts swelling your foot's going to get stuck in there."

"Appreciate the imagery." I really wish he was kidding, but he most definitely isn't. It makes sense too, which is the worst part. If he was just spewing nonsense it'd be a lot easier to ignore him and tell him to quit it. Clearly he doesn't really know what he's doing and is just trying to do whatever sounds the best, makes the most sense. He's just trying to help.

"Okay," I concede, eventually, and he starts at the laces of my boots instantly.

It hurts. It hurts more than anything has ever hurt before, and now I've got other things to compare it to. The sickness and waking up to a dead body and the sight of acid rain bubbling against someone's skin. He wiggles it off, inch by torturous inch, and the urge to kick someone off has never been stronger in my life. He's only trying to help. It takes every single thing in my power to remind myself of that.

He hands it to me when he finally gets it off, which at least gives me something to focus on other than the complete lack of confidence on his face.

I really didn't want to be right about it being broken.

"I'm just gonna pick you up. We'll go back upstairs and— and figure it out?"

Neither of us know how to fix this. There really isn't a way to fix this. Even when he slides his arm under my knees and the other around my back it hurts. I wasn't lying when I said every single step he took actually hurt, the vibrations traveling up and down like they're trying to pull my bones apart. When he finally scoops me up I wind up clutching the boot as tight as I can, because its's something else to focus on. He shouldn't even be carrying me, unsteady as he is. We could both end up on the ground for it.

Unless I want to sit in the stairwell for the rest of my life, though, I'll chance him falling over while he's carrying me.

"I'll be honest," Vance says. "I have no idea how to fix this."

Well, at least he's not lying about it. It's not like I assumed he could anyway. He shoulders the door open as gently as he can but even that hurts and I bite my lip.

There are very few things in this world that are completely beyond repair, and normally this wouldn't be one of them, but it feels like it is. No one is coming to usher me away and save me from the pain. This is probably how I'm going to die, unable to run while someone walks towards me without a care in the world, and I'll see every second of it coming.

"I'm gonna try, though," he continues, and maybe it's stupid to garner a little bit of hope at that, but it's all I have left to cling to, other than him and this stupid boot.

If I hadn't helped him in the first place, maybe neither of us would be here now. Maybe he would have died in that room, all on his own, and I'd be left to sit in the stairwell until something put me out of my misery.

It seems like were an inch away from done, that were slipping closer every second.

He's not giving up though.

That means I can't either.

* * *

Like I said, I swear this is the second last no death chapter that exists. I swear I will ratchet up the killing soon. I always do, closer to the end, so rest assured that I will get it over with with the emotional bullshit semi-soon and start with the bad (fun) stuff. Hooray for making things more desperate or more sad in the long run, though, because that's always good, right? That's totally what you guys want. Cue someone yelling at me in the same way I got yelled at last week, except maybe not quite as hysterically.

I like getting yelled at. Sue me.

Until next time.


	26. The Four Horsemen

Arena, Day Six.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

I know how to fix certain things, but not everything.

There's no real way to tell if something in Kelsea's ankle or foot is actually broken. It certainly looks it, but I'm no doctor. Her foot has swelled to twice it's normal size, purpled and blackened all along the side and stretching up into her calf.

If it's not broken, I may as well just jump off a balcony right now. There's no way I could be any more wrong.

She can't put any weight on it, not that I've even really let her try, and even hopping around seems to hurt. It's not like I've ever even broken anything. Maybe in a few days it'll be better, but who knows if the two of us will even still be here come then.

It's a bit easier when she's sleeping, or at least dozing on and off. I've got her spare boot tucked away into her backpack but I don't imagine she's going to need it anytime soon. The first-aid kit is doing approximately nothing, because there's no magical cure for a broken bone in there. If only someone would send us one, it would solve at least one of our problems.

What we do have is the barest supplies imaginable in this hell of an arena. The bandages won't do any good as is, but maybe combined with something that could help keep her leg straight for the time being. It takes me enough time just to find some pieces of wood that aren't full of splinters, and even longer than that to arrange them into something that even mildly resembles a splint.

I don't know how much good it will do, but even a single percent is better than what we currently have.

I'm about to shake her awake, gently as I can, when I _smell_ it.

That's been the one blessing, up until right now. Every other sense getting assaulted was alright as long as I had one to myself, even if I didn't realize it until right now.

And I seriously didn't realize it until I smell the smoke.

It almost feels like I'm imagining it. It wouldn't exactly be the first time I'd imagined something that wasn't there, now would it? I sit there for longer than I probably should, but the acrid, bitter tang of the smoke only gets stronger in the air. The door is mostly closed, and when I see the faintest wisps of smoke in the hallway, too much like the shadows that appear in the night, that's when I decide it's time to properly freak out.

I reach over and shake Kelsea's shoulder, stumbling to my feet. The unsteadiness is almost gone but it still takes everything in my power to stay upright as I open the door and stumble out into the hallway. Maybe that's because I don't want whatever's happening to be a real thing.

"What's going on?" Kelsea asks blearily. The smell is even stronger out here and I draw my shirt up over the bottom of my face, struggling to breathe.

"What day is it?"

"Six? I think." Her eyes are slowly widening, as the smell reaches her as well. "Why?"

When she told me about the first tower I almost didn't believe her. It's like my body didn't want me to be awake for that, and maybe that was for the best. Still, looking down and seeing nothing but the ruined ground where the first tower had been was like a punch to the gut.

Three towers, three days.

I almost don't want to be right.

"Okay, you put the backpack on," I tell her. The smoke's coming thicker from one end of the hallway, where the stairwell is. I'm sure there's another one somewhere along the opposite side, and the air seems clearer that way.

There's still a small part of me that's panicking. It feels like the ground beneath my feet is growing warmer by the second, and I don't know if it's real or not. By the time I screw my head back on straight Kelsea has somehow struggled to her feet, the backpack over her shoulders, holding my half-finished splint. She half slides and half hops towards me, wincing with every foot she gains.

"What is this?" Kelsea asks, waving it at me, and yeah. Maybe my craftsmanship really isn't that great. That's why Dad fixes things and not me, the cars from the rich parts of the square and the broken radios, the projectors.

We all know what my hands were built for, and it's not that.

"Doesn't matter. Up you get."

She gives me a doubtful look as I crouch down but grabs my shoulders anyway, and her struggling onto my back is easily one of the most awkward things I think she's attempted thus far, but at least my hands can be free if I need them to. She loops one arm around my shoulder and holds onto the splint with the other. I hook my hands under her knees and haul her up a bit further.

It's not the worst set-up we've ever had.

"What do you think's happening?"

I can't manage anything but uncertain silence. Kelsea won't take that as an answer, and even though we're headed away from the smoke she tugs at my shoulders, all but steering me into the nearest room. There's only one window, half-boarded up, but she pokes her head through it, leaving me hardly any room to see at all.

I didn't want to be right.

The water down on the ground has been getting worse for days now, flooding everything in sight. It's nearly covered the entire first floor by now. No one's going down there now, not unless it's one of the Fours. There's no way to move buildings except for the bridge.

It doesn't really help that half the building below us is on fire either.

You can't even hear it, the crackling of the flames. Despite the rain drowning everything out the fire continues to grow higher and higher by the second as we stand there and watch it.

It's maybe ten or so odd floors from the bottom of the bridge, and we're a little bit further than that up above it.

"I was really hoping it wasn't that," I manage, but there really isn't any time to focus on that.

I tighten my hands around her knees, and she clutches harder at my shoulders, and I take off for the stairs.

* * *

 **Early Sinnett, 14 years, District Three Female.**

* * *

I'm never going in a building again when this is all over and done with.

Every single thing we've seen or stumbled upon has been nothing but bullshit at the end of the day. No food, hardly any water, not a weapon in sight except for the pen in my pocket that only serves to make me angrier every time I remember it's the only thing I've found.

It's hard to accept the fact that the stupid pen would be the only thing to my name at all if Zion wasn't around and so willing to share the contents of his backpack with me. That level of helpfulness is almost enough to be suspicious, if he hadn't been like that since the very beginning, with virtually everyone.

I'm pretty sure that he's going to make friends with a damn vulture if one of them ever comes close enough for him to try it.

Just once I want something to not happen. I want to think it's happening and for life to push back and tell me it's not, that everything's okay. That I can close my eyes and nap for five minutes without wondering if I'm never going to wake up from it.

Right now is apparently not one of those times.

Though really, what was I expecting, a miracle? Obviously not.

I'm only running ahead of Zion right now because I think the smoke's thinner the lower you are, and he's been giving the skyscrapers a run for their money in the height department since the day he walked in here. Realistically we should be crawling, but we're never going to get to the bridge like that.

I've already seen two people cross the bridge into what I'm sure will be the last remaining tower, the black one. Telling Zion that will only make him panic. Who knows if there are others that have crossed over already. We very well could be the last ones; it took us so long to notice that we probably are.

He's coughing, behind me. Realistically I could probably outrun him. _Realistically_ I could hide on him in five seconds flat and leave him to stumble somewhere on his own and die of smoke inhalation, so why won't I?

Probably because there's no way he'd do the same to me. He'd come after me and die of smoke inhalation too before he ever let that happen. He stood strong and waited for me when the first one fell, was the one who stopped my head from bleeding all through the night.

Speaking of which, I don't think all this running is helping that situation either.

The smoke is so thick by the time we get to the fiftieth floor that I can hardly see and nearly go sprinting right past the door. It's only Zion's hand locking around my arm that even stops me, fingers digging into the point of pain, but that's grounding.

He drags me closer and closer to the bridge. The rain may be bad, as we've previously learned, but it's no worse than being doomed to burn to death.

I notice what Zion doesn't.

Issue is, I notice it way too late. What else is fucking new?

I don't know the science behind it. I just see the icy rain and the flames licking at the bottom of the bridge and how the whole thing is splintered all the way across. It cracks again, a sharp, ugly sound, and then Zion's foot hits it.

That's apparently the last thing it needs.

Several shards of glass spiral away towards the ground, and it's only his momentum that saves him. He launches himself further out, towards the bit that at least looks intact _for now_. His grip on my arm is simultaneously the best and worst thing to ever exist in the world.

He hurls himself so hard forward that my feet have no choice but to slide forward, directly into the space where the bridge is already falling, and then I fall with it.

There's almost nothing to describe the sickly, bottomless pit of your stomach when it realizes that there's no longer anything beneath your feet. Zion's hand is still locked around my arm, even as the last of the glass cracks away. He falls to the ground, slams into it really. He nearly pulls my arm out of my socket I slam to a halt so fast, swinging away in the empty air.

He reaches his other arm down and his fingers close tight around my wrist. That still doesn't really stop me from noticing the fact that I'm hanging fifty stories above the ground with nothing but his bare hands to stop me from falling, already reddened by the rain.

"Stop wiggling, stop," he demands, and I fall still, feeling far too much like a dead fish for my liking, soaked to the bone. At least moving gave me some purpose. Now I'm just hanging her waiting for him to either pull me up or lose his grip, whatever happens first.

"We're having really bad luck with these buildings," Zion points out after a second, cheek pressed hard to the glass, the broken edges digging into his skin. His grip on my arm hasn't faltered once, even with the rain.

"Yep. Pull me up now please."

Thankfully he ignores the frantic edge to my voice, as he very carefully starts to wiggle back, pulling me with him. It seems almost effortless to him, as he gets both my forearms up over the edge and then the rest of my torso. As soon as I get a good grip on the railing he lets go with one arm, reaching down to tangle his hand in the back of my jacket. That's grounding too, oddly enough, a reassuring weight against my spine.

He manages to sit up, taking me with him. I've got to be crushing one of his legs but he doesn't seem to mind, as he stares at the end of the now second broken bridge, the burning building just a few feet away.

"Fuck this arena," I decide. I'm holding onto him, now, because I can still feel that sickness in the bottom of my stomach from when I thought I was going down with the bridge, and it wasn't a feeling I particularly enjoyed.

After a moment, Zion manages a smile. God, is he weird.

"I'm with you on this one."

Well, it's about time.

* * *

 **Isi Akiloff, 17 years, District Five Female.**

* * *

I don't know which one of them I'm annoying more.

The rhythmic _tap tap tap_ of my foot hitting the ground has to have gotten to them by now. Shirin's good at ignoring things, always has been, but the tilt of his head away from the source of the noise is still noticeable. Away from me.

For once, Tanis is hiding it better. Maybe she's learned to accept it and really isn't annoyed at all. She did deal with Camden every waking minute of the day, after all. When you look back at him, maybe I'm a much smaller blip than even I've realized.

The skin at my ankle is still distorted where the shadow grabbed me, almost white before the coil stops about halfway up my calf. I keep waiting for something to happen, to wake up screaming in agony like my leg's been set on fire, but nothing has. It feels like a mark of death, like I've been branded. It's something or nothing at all, and who knows if I'll ever find out.

Shirin leans his head into his hand, fingers flitting over his ear. Yeah, he's definitely trying to drown out the sound I'm making, and god is it satisfying. Even Tanis notices that, and smiles at the sight, ducking her head back down before Shirin can see.

The three of us don't fit together. That's obvious enough. There's a fire raging outside and the water rises far below us with every passing second but the mystery of us seems so much more prominent than wondering about what's happening outside.

"Stop," Shirin says finally, quietly. I think he's used to saying it and people actually listening, whereas he hasn't figured that out with me yet. It's almost funny to watch him try.

I rest my boot flat on the floor and tap my fingers along the ground instead, one after the other.

Tanis never stops smiling.

"If you don't wipe that look off your face—"

"What?" Tanis replies instantly. "You're the one more upset by her making a noise other than breathing than the fact that you killed someone a few days ago. What are you going to do? It's a fact."

It's almost comical, how bold she's getting with him. She's doing the same to me, obviously, but the difference is he's annoyed by it and I'm not. I much prefer this to the judgmental looks I felt like I was on the receiving end of before.

"Go on, act like you're a good person, if that helps you sleep at night," Shirin says. "Everyone here knows you're not."

"I haven't—"

"Killed anyone? Congratulations. Still doesn't make you any better than the two of us. You can act morally upright all you want, shit on me for it, but we both know you're not. Just because you haven't gotten your hands dirty yet doesn't mean you're an innocent little angel."

"Says Mr. Holier-than-thou," I mutter.

I never thought he would be the buzzkill in all of this. I also never thought I'd be sitting here, siding with Tanis of all people, because there's no one else to side with. There's no way she thinks she's an angel, not when she's watched us kill two people and said nothing against it.

She wants to go home too. She doesn't care who gets her closer to that point.

"Well, if you don't think she's doing enough," I say. "Then let's go do something. I'm bored anyway."

"Should've stood at the edge of the bridge and killed anyone who ran across," Tanis grumbles under her breath, sounding irritated. Great, now they're both pissy. I thought I was that enough for all three of us, but apparently not. I didn't know personality traits spread this fast or this effectively.

"Now _that's_ a good idea," I announce. Clapping my hands together feels like too much. "Let's go."

No one mentions how close the building is to completely demolished, or how the bridge is already pretty thoroughly destroyed. No one else is getting across. It's still better than sitting here doing anything, because I'm getting antsier by the minute. Antsy me is not good.

I offer Tanis one of my knives, which almost feels too dangerous. Even she looks at me in surprise, and then Shirin when he finishes adjusting his backpack, staring at the space between our hands. She takes it from me, as if there was any doubt she would.

I'm already one down, and now two, but we all have to start somewhere. If she wants to prove Shirin wrong, she's going to need something to do it.

I have a feeling she's gonna be doing it sooner rather than later, too.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

It's a good thing we got back into the black tower when we did.

It was only a matter of time before they pushed us even closer together. Nine deaths in six days isn't something I ever thought I'd hear. It almost doesn't even sound real.

We're all together, now. There were no cannons, and the tower's nearing a burnt out shell now. No one in there would have survived this long, and no one besides the two of us would dare brave the ground right now. Or the water, rather. There's no land anywhere in sight.

It's unnerving, knowing there are thirteen other people in this same building right now. That some of them could be listening to us walk by right now.

At least Celia has ended her abrupt streak of running off and telling me not to follow her, which was heart-attack inducing for a while there. I don't know if following her is any better, really, if she's just looking for danger. Better to look for it then for it to find you, I guess.

She's been on the quieter side since yesterday, which is weird. The weapons had made her bolder for a bit there, but even that seems to have faded.

I think yesterday was the first time she really looked at me, and I looked back and didn't know what to say.

I didn't really know what to do, either. Even when she had hugged me it had felt like that was about to be ripped away too, even if I knew there was nothing around us to stop it.

Despite the fact that she keeps checking over her shoulder to make sure I'm not far behind, the quiet is still unsettling.

The arrows hardly do anything to quell that, like they have been doing so far. Not even the bow. At least Celia's holding onto the crossbow more than halfheartedly. I'm not even really doing anything other than following along while she pokes her head into rooms and wanders into some, keeping watch out in the hallway.

Nothing in the next room. The door on the next one is wedged shut and she puts her shoulder into it, frowning when it doesn't move. She hits it again and finally gains a few inches, and at her next kick it swings open.

Something also comes swinging down from the ceiling at the exact same time.

I don't have to even yell, because she sees it at the same time. Whatever it is, it's a decent size and spiked, and it comes hurtling through the doorway. Celia hardly gets out of the way in time; she all but throws herself into the room to avoid it hitting her dead on, the thunk of the crossbow hitting the floor audible from out here.

She yelps, and then swears, and I have an arrow notched before I can even really think about it.

Because she's not the only person in the room.

The spikes that came down from the ceiling have stopped swinging, and I finally find myself in the doorway, arrow pointed inwards. Celia's got her right arm tangled in a mass of rope, nearly pinned against the wall, the crossbow a foot away from her feet.

The two people staring at me have completely different expressions. The Five boy, who looks like this is just somehow his normal every day life, and the Nine boy, who looks like he's even closer to throwing up all over his own shoes than I am. He's the one holding the ropes taught, while Five has a shard of glass nearly the length of his forearm.

"First one to make the decision to let me go gets spared," Celia offers. She could throw a knife at one of them, maybe, but with her left arm she's not going to be able to do it that well. The sword's useless and we all know it.

Besides, neither of them are really looking at her. They're both looking at me, and the end of the arrow.

"I knew we didn't build it as good the second time," Nine says weakly. His hands still don't falter at the rope, and neither do Five's eyes. That glass is held too high for my liking, brandished towards her like they've had all of this planned for far too long.

Five takes a step forward and I switch targets. Nine looks more threatening, physically, but I've changed my mind.

The arrow levels somewhere around his chest, his throat.

"Parker, don't. Don't move," Nine pleads. "You guys— wow, I do _not_ remember you guys having weapons before, what the hell?"

Before? Parker's gaze doesn't change, and I can imagine that glass in Celia's throat all too easily. She's still trying to get free but isn't managing much at the current rate. Clearly Nine is panicking, but he's only embodying exactly what I'm feeling on the inside.

I'm panicking. There's no other way to put it. My hands aren't as steady as I want them to be, and I can see the point of the arrow moving. Faltering.

"You're not going to do it," Parker says slowly. "If you were going to kill me, you wouldn't have hesitated in the first place. You won't do it."

He takes another step forward, and I don't let the arrow go. I should, but my hands won't release the bowstring, won't let the arrow fly.

"Rory," Celia says, and looks right at me. She sounds way too calm for the current situation. Whatever she's trying to communicate, it's not working. My brain is literally incapable at the current moment.

"You're not going to kill me," Parker repeats. He's still inching closer and closer to her, and I can practically see her blood all over the floor already, hear the words over and over again. It's too easy to believe them. I didn't come here because I thought I'd wind up killing people to eventually win.

I didn't come here because I thought I'd make it out.

I tighten my grip on the bow, and he stops to watch me. Not because he thinks I'm going to kill him. That's not it.

His fingers readjust along the shard, and he moves.

He moves, and my panic bubbles over.

The arrow's halfway across the room before I even recognize making the conscious decision to release it, and it slams directly into the center of Parker's chest at the same time that Celia manages to rip her arm free of the ropes. Parker staggers backwards with my arrow buried deep in his chest and topples over, landing with a dull thud at Nine's feet. He's trying to say something, nothing but choked air coming out.

Celia slams into me so hard I nearly drop the bow, and she has me out the doorway before Nine even makes a single noise. Like the realization just now hit him.

Somewhere along the way Celia scooped the crossbow back up and now the edge is pressed into my chest, that sharp, uncomfortable point of pain the only thing keeping my feet where they are. That, and her hands, one around my arm and the other on my chest as she wrenches the stairwell door open and pushes me down.

It takes everything in me not to just crumple and fall, a house of cards taken out by the slightest gust of wind.

I don't know how many floors down she takes me, but the bang of the door hitting the wall is synonymous with the cannon going off, and the walls shake and move with the noise.

I can blame the smoke drifting through the entire arena for the tears burning my eyes, but not for the ache in my chest, like the arrow rebounded and hit me instead. It feels like it should have.

"Hey," Celia starts. "Hey, it's fine. You're fine. You were protecting _me_ , okay, everything's fine."

That should make it better. It doesn't. All I can focus on is her hand flat against the side of my neck, and how she must be able to feel my pulse jackhammering against my skin like it's trying to force it's way out.

"It's not," I manage, the only thing that will come out other than frantic air, and Celia no longer looks like she has a solution to any of this. Her eyes are filled with nothing but disbelief, like she didn't see this coming at all. And neither did I.

"It's—"

"Hey!"

The voice startles me so much that it clears a little bit of the fog in my head. Celia whirls around, and Blair's standing at the other end of the hallway, grinning from ear to ear. Dimara pokes her head out of the adjacent room, eyes wide.

"Family reunion already?" Blair asks. "Please tell me that mace is mine."

I forgot about the mace poking out of the backpack, the spear hooked through the straps. Neither of us say anything. I don't know what else I'm even capable of saying. Dimara's eyes narrow, and Blair's face folds, watching the two of us. No one says anything.

"Bad timing?"

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

Something's gone horribly wrong here.

You can see it all over Rory's face, at the way Celia's looking at him and then back at us like she's not exactly sure where to go from here.

I know I said I didn't think Oeshe actually killed her, but seeing her alive and in front of me six days in is still something else. I still smile when I step out into the hallway, because it only feels right. Not exactly the big reunion I think we were all planning, but it's better than what I expected to get.

Celia cracks a smile, and with Blair waving his arms around the way he is, it doesn't look like anyone's up for attacking anytime soon. We should've seen that coming, the way we were all sticking so close to each other during training. Maybe Tavian really was just doomed to be the one to suffer for it.

Blair, full of tact as always, walks right over to them without a care in the world for what's going on outside of the current situation. Maybe that's a good thing, though. Whatever happened is tainting this entire moment, and if Blair has to tear the walls down to keep that from happening then I'm pretty sure he will. He drapes an arm over Celia's shoulders and then Rory's, although I mostly suspect that he does it so he can get a hand around the mace, wiggling it out of the backpack.

The makeshift one has been doing wonders for his attitude, but nothing compares to the real thing.

"You're my new favorite people," he announces joyously, and the lack of absolutely anything on Rory's face is almost starting to disturb me. Either Blair's ignoring it or he's really, really unobservant.

"Fuck you too," I say, joining them at the end of the hallway. "Gimme a hug."

Celia finally lets go of Rory long enough to turn and hug me. I think we grew closer than we were meant to, or at least supported each other. Hard as it is to admit, it was always different than Oeshe. That was just a chance we took, one that I may have worked out better in another universe.

I don't know if anything of what I'm doing is right, but it has to be.

I told Kali this wouldn't be the end of us.

"You okay?" I ask her, and she nods. "What happened?"

"Maybe just... not here. Probably should get some distance anyway."

Blair eyes the stairwell, still holding onto Rory's shoulder. Well, at least he noticed, and I don't have to call him stupid for it later on. That's a relief.

Besides, it's not like we haven't attempting to lay low ourselves. Trying to find food and water to little avail. Blair's been trying to make me something to use in that time too but there's almost nothing to find in here. Everything good was in the towers that are all but non-existent now, the burnt wreckage slowly sliding down into the water below.

The room we've been staying in isn't much, but it's got a desk to block the door for when one of us falls asleep when we shouldn't.

When we get the two of them inside I shut the door behind us. The smoke out the window is slowly spiraling away into the clouds, the sky becoming clear again. Still nothing on the horizon but the rapidly rising water, and everything underneath it.

It's then that Rory wrestles a spear out from his pack, something I hadn't even noticed, and offers it to me. It feels stupid to have made fun of Blair for it, all of a sudden. Closing my fingers around it feels like finding a missing part of myself, an extension of my own arm.

That's almost how I feel right now, realizing the four of us are actually together.

"Where in the world did you get this stuff?" I ask, turning to Celia.

"Doesn't matter now." She shrugs, trying to look nonchalant about it, but even she looks happy about all of this. It's Rory that I would expect to be happy right now, the one who wanted all of this since the beginning, and I turn back to him.

"What happened?" I repeat. I don't know if I'll get a better answer from him than Celia. His eyes are downcast, staring at the space between his feet, or maybe his fingers locked around the bow.

"Doesn't matter now," he echoes, voice flat, and I have no choice but to accept it.

Kinda like a lot of things.

I turn back, looking at Blair and then Celia in turn. "Allies?"

Blair shakes his head and has the audacity to snort, turning and looking out the window again. This time Celia doesn't manage a smile, but there's no uncertainty in her next words.

"As if there was any ever doubt."

Yeah. As if.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

The cannon fires, echoing off into the distance, and takes a part of me with it.

It sounds so stupidly cliche, all of it, but I'm staring at Parker's body on the floor and the arrow in his chest and that's all it feels like. A cliche. Like something that should be happening to anyone else but me, right now.

This wasn't meant to happen.

Issue is, I can't make myself move from where I all but fell to my knees next to him. There's still blood soaking rapidly through the front of his shirt, even if his heart's stopped beating. The worst part is his eyes, just that one last brief flicker of horror before he died. He had been so sure.

I feel like I should be screaming. Crying. Hitting my fists against the wall.

Nothing will come out. It's like there's not enough air in the world, all of a sudden. My breath is coming too fast, but that's it. I know that I'm probably two seconds from a panic attack, but nothing I think will make my heart slow again.

It's all back to the first day, when I felt like this. Parker had sat in front of me and apologized and done nothing else, but somehow that had helped.

He's in front of me now too. But I'm not going to get any kind words from a corpse.

There is something so, so wrong with how I feel right now. Laurel had been a shock, like getting hit by a lightning bolt. But watching him step away from me and towards her, I was waiting for it. Waiting for one of the arrows to hit him. He was so certain of himself and I was anything but.

I gave everything to him. The glass, all in his pockets now. The rope, and the wood. My hands aren't going anywhere near him to collect it.

The thing is, with Parker it almost felt like I had a purpose. He told me what to do and where to go and maybe to anyone else that would have been embarrassing. Taking orders from a thirteen year old like I was completely clueless, like I didn't know what life even was.

Sitting here now, I realize why it never bugged me.

Sitting here, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do next.

Get up, move out of this room. Away from his body. That would be what anyone else would do. But what after that? Our trap is done for. The other buildings are gone. The people who just killed him ran off to god only knows where.

"Just tell me what to do," I manage finally. "I don't know what to do."

Nothing happens.

I don't really know why I expected it to.

Not even Crux can save me from myself right now. There's got to be people no matter where I turn, and he can't tell me something as obvious as that. I can't run into anybody.

"Okay, just get up."

Talking to myself already. A really great sign.

I grab the wall behind me and rise unsteadily to my feet. My boots are still too close to him and I step over his legs, nearly crossing half the room with that one step alone. The hallway is thankfully empty. If they were just around the corner waiting for me I don't know what I'd do.

I can't help but turn back, even if it feels wrong. I almost want to go back in, too. Surely something in here could protect me better than this. Just simple old me, with no clue in the world.

The glass is lying a few inches from his outstretched palm, fingers already deathly pale.

I reach forward and close the door.

There's nothing else here for me but a dead body that was working on becoming a friend, in whatever way he knew how to. A thing that almost but not quite existed, even though I never expected it to in the first place.

That room is nothing but a grave now.

It's time to go.

* * *

Shout-out to my nephew Barrett who was born Wednesday, who, several years from now, will probably discover all the atrocious things I've done on the internet and be extemely unimpressed.

So the accidental panic murder being a thing for me was like, half a joke, but I'm slowly realizing as I go on that it most definitely isn't. Coupled with someone who shouldn't be killing actually killing someone and you've got my full collection of tropes rounded right up, apparently. Also did it seriously take me three years and three stories to get together a group of entirely almost completely functional Careers? You bet your ass it did.

We're almost to what I'm thinking is my favorite stretch of chapters that I've ever written, I'm pretty sure, so that's exciting as well!

Until next time.


	27. What Happened Before

Arena, Day Seven.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

We're in the middle of a weird, seemingly never-ending cycle.

Move and stop, sleep and walk. Or at least Vance is walking and he's still piggy-backing me around, the backpack a tense weight between my shoulders. There's only so much to do, besides walk in circles and up and down stairs. It's been nothing but blank walls, empty corners, barren shelves, over and over again. It feels like we're stuck in a loop and can't escape it.

The last of the red tower finally crumbles down into dust, drifting down into the water below. Everything's been too quiet. Even the rain, having washed off some of the blood from Vance's hands and face, seems almost not-there. It's still spattering over what of the windows are left intact, but I keep expecting it to stop, for some reason. It hasn't given us any indication over the past week to suggest that it will.

It's a really bad cycle to be in. We're both too quiet, waiting to stumble upon something that clearly doesn't exist. The water continues to rise below us, no doubt driving the rest of us closer and closer together. Even then there's still no sign of anyone, no noise coming from anywhere.

I didn't think we could get any quieter, but it's not long before I'm nearly falling asleep on Vance's shoulder because there's nothing else to do. His footsteps have become rhythmic at this point, neither of our voices disturbing me.

"You're not tired?" I ask eventually, because I know well how little sleep we both got the night before. Only one building left standing, and we're both convinced that any second it's going to go down too, and take us with it. There's no bridge to escape on this time, no ground to flee to. There's no way out of this, not unless someone knows something that I don't. It would exactly surprise me.

The only thing I have going for me, really, is that the pain in my ankle has at least subsided enough that I don't feel like crying every other five minutes. It's still swollen, black and blue. but it's _something._

I feel Vance shake his head against mine, my chin hooked over his shoulder. His hands tighten around my knees. I have no idea how he isn't tired. The lack of sleep coupled with carrying me around, barely eating or drinking anything. He should be. That's not even including the concussion he most definitely still has, the bloodloss.

"We can stop if you want."

His head shakes again. By this point his movements have to be completely robotic, muscle memory. I don't think anyone else would still want to be standing at this point.

The weight of the scalpel in my pocket gets heavier and heavier by the day. I haven't pulled it out since that first day, since he told me to keep it and some of the blood on it flaked back onto my own hand. There's no doubt in my mind that he's not going to hurt me. Hurting someone after spending hours upon hours of carrying them around seems kind of pointless in the long run.

Besides, who knows what would have happened to him if I hadn't found him when I did. What would've happened to _me._

"Can I ask what happened, before I found you?"

I regret the words as soon as they escape, and his footsteps falter, for the first time in hours. It's hard, when I can't see his face. Even without that though, it's like I can hear his thoughts trying to escape his head. How he's trying to work out what to say.

"I was trying not to think about it," he says. "Don't really like dwelling on it."

"I figured. I'm sorry."

He shakes his head again, and it feels an awful lot like that's one of the only things he still knows how to do for certain. That, and keep walking. Maybe that's why he doesn't want to stop, for fear that he won't start again.

"You know my ally? Farren? Do you know if shes's still alive?"

"I think so? I know we haven't been paying attention too well but I don't remember seeing her."

He lets out a breath, strained, through his teeth, and I figure that has to be the end of that. Admittedly it's more than I've gotten since I found him, so you know, baby steps. If I could even take a single one.

That's the thing, though. What have I done to earn that, besides save him in the first place? That's if he even needed saving, and we'll never know for certain. The thing is, both of us spent three days in other places before we ended up together, and those three days for him are just as much of a mystery as my own. Why do I deserve to know anything of what happened to him, when he doesn't know either?

"He died right next to me. Houston. We both got sick with something - it was really bad, and it happened to him first. I went to sleep and when I woke up he was just... gone. It was his cannon that woke me up, too. I have no idea how long I would've slept if that hadn't happened, and he was dead right behind me the entire time."

Vance finally does stop, then, and tilts his head to look over his shoulder at me.

"I thought we were doing so well, too," I admit. "We had the backpack and we hadn't seen anyone. Should have known it wouldn't last."

He turns away to stare at the wall ahead of us, blank as the rest of them. Nothing ever changes.

"We got sick too, all three of us. Me first, unfortunately. But it's when I started to come out of it that it got bad. Farren and Casper were both in the thick of it, and Casper just— he lost it. And I wanted to keep trying, because I knew why he was freaking out. I knew what it did to your head. I was the only one that could diffuse it, too."

"You don't have to say anything else," I say quietly, because I can imagine it. I can see the next page of all of this.

The words come out anyway. "She was still screaming, when I ran off. I stabbed him in the throat and then _left her there_ , with him about to die any second, because I panicked. Left everything else behind too."

It's all the pieces I could figure out on my own finally put together. Not that it really changes anything. It would have been more surprising to hear that he _hadn't_ killed someone. And like I said, I don't think he'd do the same thing to me. Maybe everyone hopes that, delusional at it is, but I really don't believe he would.

"I'm sorry," I say eventually. There's nothing else to say. They're clearly not the words he expected, either, but he nods, and it breaks the cycle. Maybe now, things will finally start to look different.

Maybe things will finally start to change.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

Something finally clicks, when we're walking around looking for people that we never find.

Isi never asks for the knife back, and I don't know when she will. After a while Shirin gets tired and closes his eyes, having followed us all night looking. Wherever all the people are in this remaining tower, they're miraculously staying away from us.

I wait hours, for Isi to follow suit and close her eyes. She's been sitting behind a desk now, knees draw up to her chest, for hours. I hear her remaining knife dig into the wood again, tracing the seam between two pieces, the groove getting deeper and deeper every time. The back of the chair is digging in awkwardly to her jutting shoulders every time she leans back, and she never seems to care.

If I try and pull something on them awake, it won't work. Two to one really isn't something I have any desire to try out.

She just won't go to sleep.

"If you're going to make a break for it, just do it."

I freeze. Isi's staring straight at me, one finger on the hilt of the knife, twirling it deeper and deeper into the wood. I wait, for the second she grabs the knife and sends it flying my way, but it doesn't come.

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't try lying to me. That doesn't end well for anyone, and it won't end well for you either."

I stand up, but the knife stays hidden in my belt, and my hand is shaking with the effort of keeping it by my side. Isi tilts her head, one finger still on that stupid knife, and that's just the cause of all of our problems, isn't it?

"I don't blame you," Isi admits. "If I was in your position I'd probably want to run too. Test my luck on my own. Lucky for me I'm not in that position, though. As if I would ever be the person that ended up in that situation."

Of course she couldn't. Because things just go the way they're supposed to for people like her, always. Even when I thought she'd be the problem for me it's been Shirin. He's the one I'm scared will just slit my throat when I'm sleeping, when he gets tired of imagining what my voice will sound like when I wake. She's been more on my side than I would have ever expected.

"Go," she offers, and smiles.

That smile is the least reassuring thing I've ever seen.

"You're not serious."

"Why would I not be serious? I admit, you stuck it out longer than I thought you would. Especially with him harping on you every other day."

This is coming from the girl who handed me a knife yesterday, with the intent of having me finally prove myself. That never happened, obviously, and now she's just letting me go? It's too easy. Things were never going to be easy, not like this. For us things we're supposed to end in some gloriously bloody mess, with only one of us standing at the end of it. Or maybe none of us.

I was never under any illusion that I was going to be that one person.

"I'll deal with him," she says. It occurs to me that I'm opening and closing my mouth an awful lot, nothing coming out. "If you see me again, don't come running back. Go in the opposite direction. And do it fast."

God, she's _serious._ I feel nearly hysterical, standing on the opposite side of the desk, staring down at her.

I close my eyes and turn around.

I'm almost prepared for the feel of her last knife ripping through my spine. Killing me, if she's feeling merciful. Paralyzing me if I'm on the not so lucky side. Either instant death or total, all-consuming pain for a few blinding moments until she decides to finish me off.

Nothing happens.

I take an unsteady step forward, open my eyes, and Shirin is looking back at me.

It feels so cold, suddenly, that it's enough for my breath to freeze in my lungs.

"Leaving so soon?" Shirin asks. He's not even moving, like he could be a corpse looking up at me with open eyes, voice deathly quiet.

Well, now I'm fucked.

Isi still hasn't moved, behind me. I have no idea if she was really planning on letting me go or if she knew he was awake, and was just waiting for the moment when I realized I wasn't going to have a chance. There's only one way out, and I won't get past Shirin before he's up on his feet, his bonesaw splitting my face in two. What good is the knife going to do, against that? What good is the knife going to do when I said it's always been the problem?

The idea rises up in my head, almost violently, and I turn around again before I can tell myself not to.

She's still sitting down behind me, looking almost confused. One of her hands still holding onto the knife and the other flat on the desk, the _tap tap tap_ of her fingers echoing in the back of my mind.

I see the realization hit her too late, when the knife she gave me yesterday is half an inch from her fingers and she doesn't have any time to move them.

The knife hits her skin and cuts through the bone of her fingers, past the second knuckle, and she screams.

I _feel_ Shirin lunge towards us, but that's the entire point. He can't see what's going on, only the blood as the knife finally gets the whole way through and I drag it all the other way to the end of the desk. Her fingers go with it, hitting the ground not far from my feet. She rips her hand away from me, what's left of it, still screaming like a banshee.

I dive to the side, even as she rears back out of the chair. Shirin's hands pass through the spot where I had been standing a second too late, and when he catches sight of what I did, he stops. He _stops_.

That's all I needed.

I practically slide into the wall I'm moving so fast, and am headed for the door before he even starts moving again. I don't even think he knows what to do. His backpack is still laying discarded by the open door and I grab it with my free hand, slinging it over my shoulder as I stumble out the door and into the hallway, Isi still screaming behind me.

There's blood all over the knife, sliding back down to my fingers, but there's no way I'm letting go of it.

Not now.

* * *

 **Shirin Azami, 17 years, District Three Male.**

* * *

I can't stop staring after her.

I hear Tanis' footsteps, fading further and further down the hallway. Isi never stops screaming, just behind me, the noise shrill and grating against my ears. It's only those two noises, echoing back and forth, until a door slams far away from us and her footsteps disappear.

I turn on her and grab the wrist of her good arm, as hard as I can, and she flinches. Her hand is locked white knuckled around what's left of her fingers, blood spurting between the gaps she isn't quite managing to cover up. It's all over the desk, and the floor where the fingers landed.

" _Stop_ ," I force out, and she does, miraculously. She swallows, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, and blinks them back, looking right at me.

"You're going to bring half this damn arena down on us. Stop screaming."

"Fuck you," she manages, and rips her arm away from me. One of her foot slips through the blood at her feet and she nearly stumbles. Would have, if I hadn't grabbed at her arm again, hand locking around her elbow.

"You wanna say that again?" I ask. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm the only person you've got left right now."

She wants to say it again. I can see it in her eyes, in the defiant way she looks up at me now, the stumps of her fingers forgotten.

"You were going to let her go. You were going to sit here and watch her walk away, and for what? For _what_?"

Even laying there I hadn't known if she was serious or not. I had been as confused as Tanis was, for once in my life, wondering what was going to come next. When she had turned around, and nothing had happened...

That was the last thing I had expected.

"Fuck you," she repeats, but the venom's gone. Most of all it's the confusion in her own eyes, now, like she's not even sure why she did it in the first place. Who would have thought, that I'd come to believe that she had something in her body almost like humanity. It's vanished now that she's looking at me, at all the blood coating her hands. If she wasn't bleeding all over my shoes I know she'd have chased Tanis halfway to hell by now.

Finally, she sinks down into the chair, dragging me a foot closer to her. The same amount of push and pull that's existed since the beginning, something that I've been so convinced was like to snap any second.

It's the two of us now. Two, out of six, with two others still out there. Outsiders, deserters. That's all they are, all they ever were.

Isi is struggling to keep her composure, to reign in the surging tidal wave of emotions that are flooding over her now. Humanity had seeped back in her long enough to teach her that it was foolish to keep a hold of it in the first place, to teach her a lesson about why we are the way we are.

I grab her backpack with my free hand and haul it closer along the desk, the blood collecting in sticky pools in the spots that we haven't touched. She won't look at me, doesn't look at me as the first aid kit tumbles open. It's never been that much, maybe enough to keep us alive in a life or death situation, but not everything I could need. Maybe enough to stop the bloodflow, if she's lucky.

If it's not, then we'll have larger problems on our hands.

"Let go," I instruct her, and for a long moment she doesn't move. At the end of the day we were both just machines and one part was like to break, eventually, separate itself from the rest. She's still her at the heart of it, the screaming proved that, but it's going to take something monumental for this to fix itself so easily.

Slowly, she eases her fingers open. Another wave of blood starts up and drips over the knees of her pants.

Hardly enough gauze, not enough needle and thread to pull off any miracles. She's staring out the open door, whole arm quivering beneath my grip, like Tanis will walk back in. That won't magically re-attach her fingers, won't put back together an alliance that was never really whole to start with.

Her eyes never waver, even when I start unrolling the gauze, but her voice is hoarse when she finally speaks.

"How many people are left?"

"Thirteen," I answer automatically, and she finally looks up at me. Thirteen, including her, excluding me. She doesn't miss the inclusion. Any other ally would have said twelve, wouldn't have considered her a number at all.

I also don't think she ever expected any less.

"Too many," she replies, quietly, and only looks me in the eye for another heartbeat before she picks up her last remaining knife, fitting her hand around the grip.

It's always too many. Too many, or just not enough.

There's no other way for it to be.

* * *

 **Zion Lancaster, 18 years, District Eleven Male.**

* * *

The screaming finally comes to a halt.

Early and I stand by the door for a long time, waiting for it to start up again. The pen in her hand is becoming a stark reminder of how little we truly have to protect the both of us, if it ever comes down to it. It's been days of almost falling and air too thick to see through properly for what feels like an eternity. Much longer than we've actually been in here.

Nothing even seems real at this point. Nothing but that screaming, a haunting wail that rose and fell before it was abruptly cut off.

No cannon. No nothing, after that. More of the same.

While I take stock of what exactly we have left in the bag, sitting back against the wall, Early remains lingering by the door, eyes wary. I haven't seen her scared, not properly, since one fleeting second where she nearly went catapulting over the edge of the broken bridge, nothing but my hands keeping her from plunging into the water below. Even that had only lasted a heartbeat, to the point where now I reckon I imagined it.

She really is Farley.

It's like everything has changed, since I saw Olympia's face in the sky. Since I realized that one of the most formidable little girls I've ever met finally found something she couldn't quite make herself match. It was hard, to associate the girl I knew with the actual _fact_ of her being dead. It still doesn't make any sense, and I'm not sure it ever will.

"I'm glad it was you," I say eventually. Our food's nearly gone, but that's also because I've hardly been eating. It's not like I'm not used to it.

Early turns, eyes flickering between two places of emptiness - the blankness out in the hallway and a spot just over my head, against the wall.

"What?"

"I still regret not being with Olympia this whole time. Maybe she'd still be alive if I had. And I can't help but wonder how it all would have gone down, if she was still around. But there's no point, is there? I'm not— I'm glad it was you. Of all the people I had to chose you turned out to not be too bad."

She smiles wryly. "You sound very sure about that."

"Because it's the truth."

There's been a lot of moments, where I could have decided the opposite. Where most people would have. I had to chew her out not long after I properly met her, if we're keeping count.

But if Olympia was like a different version of the same sibling, then Early is too. I wasn't letting that go for the world.

I can feel her staring at me, waiting for the words to be taken back. I keep my eyes focused on the backpack, hard as it is. Like I said, there's really not much in here to look at, and her gaze burns more and more with every passing second.

"You're dumb, you know that," she says casually, and I can't help the smile that appears on my face. No one else would be smiling.

Early rolls her eyes. "Point proven, thank you very much."

I finally slide the zippers on the backpack shut and I get up, shouldering it. It says a lot, how Early doesn't instantly turn back, some level of distrust in her eyes. It had been so hard to break through that, to convince her that I wouldn't walk up behind her and try to pull something.

"I'm serious," I say quietly. "I am glad it was you."

I'm also never going to hear the same words back, no matter what I say. I won't hear any gratitude for grabbing her that first day, for bandaging her head, for saving her from falling to her death. I wouldn't expect any less from her.

She nods, and nearly steps out into the hallway.

She freezes when I wrap my arms around her.

I've never felt someone go so stiff with shock so quickly. It's a lot like last night, when she saw the Five boy's face in the sky and for a minute that felt too long didn't know how to comprehend it. She doesn't know what to make of this either, and I can feel it in the way she squares her shoulders, unmoving.

She's always been tall and too thin, a tree bending in the wind, in any direction as long as it was away from me. Ready to crack in half or snap right back up, whatever was asked of her first.

One of her arms comes up eventually, just enough to squeeze me back for half a second before she pulls back and steps around me, back out into the hallway.

"Thanks."

Her eyes are downcast, even as the words come out, and the smile reforms on my face.

Like I said. Still all Farley.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

This is almost going too well.

It feels like we should have a campfire built in the middle of the room, like we should be holding hands and singing songs.

There's a lot that happened that we don't know about. How the two of them ended up together in the first place, what they've been through since then. They still don't know where we got the weapons, that we had to find Anya's body to do it, what actually happened yesterday. The vacancy in Rory's eyes is still the only thing giving it away, the silence where before I'm sure he would have said something.

Blair's the only one who still has the energy to be standing up, although I'm sure if he was sitting down he'd stop complaining about the hunger so much.

I know it's affecting all of us more than we'd like to admit, but Rory is all but mute, even if he does manage a smile at whatever Blair says next.

"How were you the only one that didn't get sick?" Blair accuses, looking at Dimara now. "That's stupid. You can't be here anymore. You no longer have access to our secret club."

"Yeah, super secret," Dimara says, pointing to the open door. "I'm sorry for being the favorite."

Blair opens his mouth and Dimara leans over to kick him in the shin a second before I do. He hops away and resumes his spot sitting on the desk, which I'm more convinced is going to break by the second. At least it would be funny.

It's good, though. Nice to not think of all of the shit we've seen in the past few days. I feel like such a hypocrite, for enjoying this now when I so vehemently denied that I ever wanted it in the first place.

"Who says you're the favorite?"

"I do," Dimara insists. "You get like, two points for killing Camden. I have like 10 by this point. My girlfriend could kick your ass."

"I'm sorry, your what?" Blair demands, getting up off the desk _again,_ looking suddenly delighted. "You have a what?"

"You heard me."

"Who else here has a secret significant other?" Blair asks, and then points at me. "I pick you."

"Ew, no," I respond. "Why would I do that when I could have an awkward, inconvenient crush on my sister's boyfriend?"

Dimara outright chokes, not even attempting to hide it and Rory very slowly turns to look at me, all slow-motion. Even his eyes are a little bit incredulous.

"What? I'm pretty sure she knew, so it's not like it matters. And besides. _Past tense_."

"You sure?" Blair asks.

"Yes, I'm sure. Shut your mouth."

"Why is it past tense?"

"What do you mean, _why is it past tense_? Because I got over it? Why are you so nosy?"

Blair shrugs, and then crosses his arms over his chest, looking directly at Rory. "I'm _sure_ that's the only reason."

I narrow my eyes at him. Dimara snickers and then looks away, pressing her mouth to her sleeve to stop the noise from getting any louder. It still doesn't stop me from hearing it, nor does it stop me from finally noticing that Rory's looked away and has his face buried in his knees. He's shaking, silently, and it takes me a moment to realize he's _laughing._

"I'm leaving," I announce, and Rory grabs my leg before I'm even half-way up, still laughing. Dimara has both of her hands flattened over her face, like that helps at all. It really doesn't.

"Please don't," Rory manages, hand still locked around my ankle, and I can't tell if he's that red because he's embarrassed or because he's that amused.

Probably the latter, knowing my luck. I take every single thing about this going well back, right now.

I sit back down but this time I spin around, until I'm facing the wall, and now Blair's laughing too. We're making such a racket it'll be a miracle if someone doesn't hear us and wander up here, probably wondering what unfortunate animal is up here dying.

"You can't avoid talking to us forever."

"Yes I can. You're all fuckers."

That only sends them into another fit of laughter. The noise isn't pleasant, not in the slightest, because it seriously sounds like one or all three of them are about to keel over and die right at my feet. It may not sound nice but it feels like it is, like we should have just done this from the beginning. We really should have.

I look over my shoulder and Dimara is wiping honest to god real tears from her eyes, half laying on the floor. Rory gives me a sheepish smile.

"Quit it," I demand.

"I'm not doing anything. I didn't do anything!"

Yeah, sure he's not.

That's what I thought too, and look at where I am now.

* * *

Last no death chapter, folks. Apologies for literally everything that happens after this. It's a lot.

I've put another **poll** up, this time asking who you want in the Final 3 (and please pick three options except for the person who already decided to pick 2), mostly because I have no idea what else I'm supposed to do polls about halfway through the Games. Probably do a victor one in a few weeks while there's still a decent playing field left.

Also, a few months ago, someone told me that because I had chopped fingers off in both of my other stories, that there was no need to do it in this one. To whoever you were, because I sure as shit can't remember, thanks for making me take that as a challenge. I really appreciated feeling the need to shove that somewhere in here.

Until next time.


	28. Cheating Death

Arena, Night Seven.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

There's too much going on and nothing at all.

We've at least managed to get Celia talking to us again, even if it takes hours for her to be able to turn around without one of us trying and failing to smother a smile.

The moon almost seems more faded, now, as the rain trickles to a halt and red light washes over the arena yet again. The water is becoming dangerously high now, maybe five to ten odd stories below what's left of the bridge. Everything below that is swallowed by the waves that don't stop churning. There's nothing to move it, no rain and no wind, but it moves all the same.

It's eerie. Even with three other living, breathing bodies in the room behind me, something doesn't feel right.

 _Everything_ feels more dangerous now, with three other people around. Maybe this was how it was meant to be all along, though. Maybe they were meant to be here, to force me into giving a damn.

And I do. I really do. It just makes me wonder where we're supposed to go from here. What I'm supposed to do.

Everything Seren said to me, and none of it prepared me to be standing here right now in this moment, wondering how much of it was even true.

A hovercraft descends from the sky and sweeps out, low over the water. The water churns all over again, smashes up against the side of the building when I look directly down. There's no body collect, nothing to change. They're just watching us, waiting for the next thing to happen.

Eventually it takes back off, headed for the horizon line. I can only follow it for so long before it winks out, like it was never there at all.

"You going to sleep any time soon?" Celia asks, surprising me. Every time she's opened her mouth the past few hours it's been to tell one of us to shut up, or something similar.

I don't know if I can sleep. That's all I did the first few days, trying to keep my insides where they belonged. To think, when I got to the Capitol that I relished the chance to sleep in a bed that was actually comfortable, in a silence that was completely foreign.

I shake my head and tighten my hands around the windowsill. It's damp with rain, and the last of the glass shards slip off the edge and plunge towards the water below. It's nice to feel the air for once without wondering what bad thing is going to come out of it.

"Do you wanna go?" Rory asks quietly, a few minutes after I thought he had also been sleeping. None of them are sleeping, are they?

I turn away from the window and all three of them are staring at me, half-awake. I don't even have an answer to that, not one that makes any sense to anyone but myself. Half of me wants to go running and get this over with, whatever _this_ is, while the other half fears leaving this room because of what could happen to us outside it.

Finally, I shake my head again. That doesn't shift Rory's expression, though.

"Do _you_?"

It takes me a minute to realize that Celia's not repeating the question to me, but asking him. Whatever happened before we found each other, it wasn't good. That near simultaneous cannon... it all adds up.

Rory shrugs, but that's enough of an answer.

"I don't like sitting here, just thinking," he says, and I think we can all understand that. It was different, when we were laughing and talking like we've been friends since childhood, but the silence is the worst part. What creeps in your head when no one's looking.

"If you wanna go, we can go," Dimara offers. "I wouldn't mind either. Besides, we're gonna run out of food sooner rather than later. Water too."

The water below us is taunting, the sound at night the only thing you can hear. So close but so far away.

Celia looks up at me. It's unspoken, the rule of never leaving each other alone. But we fucked up that one from the beginning, didn't we?

"You can go with them, if you want. It won't bug me."

It will. Celia shakes her head. "Don't need three sets of eyes of food. I can stay here with you."

God, how weird will that be? I've been with Dimara since day one, Celia and Rory not long after that. It doesn't make sense for all of us to sit here, waiting for the axe to fall, nor does it make sense for all four of us to wander off.

"Well, let's go then," Dimara says, immediately hopping to her feet. Apparently not as close to sleep as I thought, then.

"Right now?" Rory asks incredulously, as she grabs the collar of his jacket and attempts to yank him up. It's not a great attempt.

" _You're_ the one that wanted to go, so let's go."

He pulls himself to his feet the same time Celia does, and I watch them step towards each other, hugging automatically. Like that's a thing now. And to think she was wondering why we were teasing her so mercilessly. Rory's hands fold over her back and Dimara steps towards me, an eyebrow raised.

"We'll be back by tomorrow night, if it even takes us that long. Don't do anything stupid."

"Why would I do anything stupid?"

She punches me in the shoulder and then hugs me. "I'm serious."

"Yes, _mom_."

I can feel the eye roll I earn for that one, but I know she's serious. I also know that everyone here has learned exactly what danger magnets are, and if I'm number one then Celia is probably a closer number two. No one here is deluding themselves into thinking otherwise.

When Rory hugs me it's clear he wants to say the same thing, but if he could even get Celia to listen to him I'd be surprised. He looks relieved at the prospect of having something else to focus on, nervous at having to leave in the first place.

"Tomorrow night," Dimara repeats, standing in the doorway, and Celia gives her a thumbs up that is far too cheery to be anything other than deadly sarcasm.

"Don't come back if you don't have food!" I shout after them, and Dimara slams the door in my face.

Celia stares at the closed door for a minute, and then turns back at me.

"You realize this was a terrible idea, right?"

"The worst," I agree, and suddenly we're both wearing matching grins. The absolute worst.

At least this way, maybe something will finally happen. There's only so long I can stand here and look out this window, watch the water rise with every passing second even though the rain's stopped for the night.

Something has to give here, eventually. Something has to happen.

If not, I'll make it happen.

And I don't know how many people watching will be pleased, if it comes to that.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

The shadows never appear when I expect them to.

It feels like I've been alone for a long time, wandering in circles and wondering when I'll eventually smack into someone.

Logic's telling me that everyone will probably be headed up, away from the water, and so I head down. Maybe not the best idea for a kid who has a non-existent track record with water that isn't in a bathtub or a puddle, but it's about all my brain's willing to give me at this point.

I've got no choice but to listen to it, even if what it's telling me sounds unbelievably stupid.

The forty-third floor is empty, emptier than even the rest of them. That has to say something. No one's been down here in quite a while.

I open the door to the stairs, and while the ones leading down are only damp, the next landing is completely submerged in water, maybe a few inches deep. And that's where the shadows are gathering, pooling and swirling at the next door.

"No," I say flatly. Whether I'm still talking to myself or the shadows, I'm not sure. I shouldn't be talking to either of those things, honestly.

Following them in the first place doesn't even seem sensible, but it's all I've got to follow. I can't shake the feeling that if that thing wanted me dead the first time we saw it, it would've killed us. We were _this close_ to it, a breath away, and it left us alone.

The shadows thin out and disappear into the cracks next to the door, and I sigh.

Fuck me.

I grab the railing, slick beneath my palm, and start making my way down, one slow step at a time. I can hear the water now, and I know it's not far. Everything burns, faintly, but not as bad as it does when the rain first hits you. I can last. How long is the real question.

The water is gathering at my ankles by the time I make it to the landing, my socks and boots soaked through immediately.

I crack the door open, and the reaper is standing at the other end of the hall.

I freeze. Eyes or not, there's no doubt that it can see me staring at it clear as day, no matter how small the gap is. My eyes feel like they're about to fall out of my head, my hand shaking vaguely where it's locked around the door handle. I don't know if it's from the burn or if it's because I feel about two seconds from death.

I knew what I was doing what I was coming down here, what I was following. The _why_ is something I'm having trouble figuring out, currently.

The door opens more, the water pushing against it from the other side, and I make myself slip through the gap. The water ripples away from my feet and towards the reaper, but it doesn't move. Everything passes right through it, if it's even standing on the ground to begin with.

"Is there something down here?" I ask it, like it's ever gonna open it's mouth and tell me. It's not. It's not even real, nothing but a Gamemaker trick designed to screw with me. Well, it's working.

It floats another few inches closer, and the door behind me closes with a _clang_.

"I'm not scared of you," I inform it, although the waver in my voice says otherwise. It feels like that's all my voice has been doing since yesterday, since—

It disappears, and then reappears a foot away from me.

I nearly fall over, back into the water. So much for not being scared. Now it's too close, and there's nowhere to really go. I didn't even bring anything with me, didn't find anything _worth_ bringing. I'm nothing but defenseless, just waiting for it to decide it wants me dead.

It stares at me, and how it's doing that without eyes I'm not exactly sure, but it feels a lot like it's leeching something out of me. If I even knew what that felt like.

The scythe is hovering a mere inch from my nose, and all it will take is the faintest movement and I won't have a face left. That's not a good thought either. It's so hard to look at, close as it is. I said I wasn't scared but god was I lying. It's taking everything in me to keep my face blank, to keep my hands from shaking at my side.

My feet are burning. That's strike what, number seven?

The shadows around it's body are creeping closer, closer. One wraps itself around my forearm, and a chill goes down my entire spine, even though the skin on my arm feels like it's on fire.

I'm about to close my eyes, accept my fate, when it disappears again.

Something splashes into the water at my feet.

Whatever it is bumps into the toe of my boot, but it feels like I'm frozen in place. The reaper appears again, back where it started again at the end of the hallway, but it's hardly half-formed now. It's shimmering right in front of my eyes, no weapon in it's hand, and you are _not serious right now._

I reach down, very slowly, and dip my hand into the water. My forearm is still burning, harsher than any amount of rain, but my fingers brush against something smooth, and my hand comes out of the water wrapped around the handle of the scythe, too real, solid black metal.

I look back up, and the reaper disappears through the door.

This is a hundred percent real.

So is the scythe in my hands, no longer what seemed like a figment of an imagination. It almost doesn't feel real, even as I bring my other hand up to hold onto it. It's ice cold to the touch, the blade half the length of my entire arm.

It takes everything in me to rise back up from my crouch, the scythe almost too heavy in my hands.

It's not. It's everything from the past few days coming to a rest on my shoulders, all of it hitting at once. It's crushing, like something sitting on my lungs. Like it should be harder to breathe.

It's not.

I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

* * *

 **Farren Laboy, 17 years, District Six Female.**

* * *

It's been so long since I've seen anyone.

Half of my brain is trying to drive me to a certain point, the point where I start believing I'm the only one left and I'm just wandering around for no reason at all. I know it's not the truth. It's all I've thought about for days now, trying to stop thinking about it.

Issue being, I don't really know who is left. It could be anyone, for all I know.

Anyone being the voice I've been hearing for a while now.

Whoever it is, they really haven't stopped talking. Not since I first heard them, far away on the same floor. I don't really even want to stick around to find out who it is, but something keeps me standing at those crossroads, just listening. It's higher-pitched, rapid-fire - one of the younger ones then, maybe? Now I _definitely_ feel like some sort of weird stalker.

Whatever kind of tangent she's on, it's a fierce one, and there's no sign anyone ever responds to her.

The footsteps continue to come closer, though, thumping rhythmically down the hallway, and it takes me too long to realize. That voice, and those footsteps... they're on opposite ends of the spectrum. Too high and too low.

The Eleven guy rounds the corner and nearly walks into me.

Both of us leap backwards at the same time, eyes wide, except he nearly bowls over the Three girl behind him, who just avoids hitting the wall. I do hit the wall, back pressed against it. It was her voice, then, abruptly cut off the second he took a step back.

"Farren," he says, and I can't even remember his name. I always remember names, and faces, and nothing is coming to mind now. Nothing at all.

I see both of them catch sight of the sword at nearly the same time. I've hardly put it down since I realized I still had it, and it feels too much at home in my right hand. I hate the feeling of it, because it wasn't really supposed to be mine in the first place, and we all knew it.

"Are you okay?" he asks. The girl doesn't move at all, eyes darting between the two of us. It's a miracle she can see around him when he's acting like a shield.

That's what he's doing. Unless I head back for the stairs I'll have to go through them.

He repeats the question again, and I startle. Do I look that bad? It's not like I've had a mirror to look into, any of these days. I know I haven't had access to the things I usually do, but some food was better than no food, even if my stomach doesn't really agree.

Besides, I don't know how to respond to that. I've effectively been in isolation, and looking up at him is like having a bucket of cold water dumped over my head.

Something flickers behind him, and he doesn't get a chance for any more words before his ally comes tearing around him.

There isn't any time to get the sword up between us. She launches herself at me with a speed I'm not exactly sure how she still has, after all of this. She collides with me and ends up slamming me into the floor, her on top of me. It's only by some miracle that the tile doesn't crack my skull open.

She's pressing on my hand, trying to get me to drop the sword. He's still staring above us, but the concern in his eyes is no longer for me. It's for her.

Of course. Why would I expect him to do anything for me?

She's stronger than she looks, and my fingers give way the longer she presses on them.

Something's digging into the back of my thigh, harsh and pointed.

Everything Vance did suddenly makes so much sense, clarity bursting through for _once._ I can feel the same panic he did, right now, and her knee is against my chest and my fingers are two seconds away from letting it go.

My fingers are around the scissors and headed for her instantly. All panic.

"Early!"

One of his hands descends, probably trying to stop what he can already see happening. She's still focused on the sword. That's what she's been focused on since the beginning.

The scissors bounce harmlessly off the top of his arm and sink directly into her side. I don't manage to dig them in for more than a second or two before she tears herself off of me, and when she screams it doesn't sound hurt. It sounds furious.

My fingers close around the sword again, but I can't manage to get it pointed in her direction before she's somehow back on her feet. I'm all but kneeling in front of her, but I point the sword upwards, and she stills.

There's blood spreading rapidly over her side, down her ribs, and she doesn't seem to care. She pulls the scissors out, a slow, torturous slide and more blood slicks over her skin.

"Early," he repeats again. Zion. That's his name, I remember now. His voice is too slow, like someone's shoved my head underwater. Shouldn't the adrenaline be pushing me in the opposite direction? He reaches forward and puts a hand on her shoulder only for her to shrug him off, violently. I don't miss the way her face twists when she does it. Who knows how much this will make her bleed.

Who knows how long she has left.

"Go," she says firmly, eyes never leaving mine, even though the words aren't for me. "You made me listen to you this whole time. Listen to me for once."

"Don't even suggest that."

"I always knew I was dead," Early admits. "Believe me, it's not disappointing. You don't have to be around for it."

It feels like I'm witnessing something that I shouldn't be. As much as I think it should be, the sword isn't wavering in my hands. It's pointed directly at her face, her throat. Everywhere that counts.

Zion's still staring at her, though. Even though her attention's half on him I know I'd never be quick enough to lunge up and kill her.

I also never thought I'd think that. Never thought this would be the place I finally ended up.

There are tears, somewhere inside me, that want to burst out.

The blood's blossomed out towards the line of Early's hip, turning her dark clothes even darker, a shade closer to black. I can see the two sides warring in him, clear as day. The first one, that wants to be there to protect her even until the end. And the other, that can't bear to watch that end happen right in front of him.

"I was serious, before," Early says. "Thank you."

He takes one step back. She knows she doesn't have that much time left, and so does he. That's why he tried to stop me, why he would have risked himself to try and stop it. He knew there was only one other alternative, and that very thing is looking him dead in the face.

It takes so long. His footsteps are so hesitant. Nothing like the loud, almost thunderous noise from before. There isn't any understanding on his face, not a single shred. It looks like someone just turned his world inside out, like everything he knew is suddenly backwards.

God, we're in the same boat with that one, aren't we?

He disappears around the corner, but Early must still be able to see him a second longer, because she keeps staring. Doesn't look down at me again until I hear the sound of a door opening, far down the other side of the building.

"Why'd you do that?" I ask. She takes something else out of her jacket, something so small in the clasp of her hand that I can't even make out.

"He's one of the only people in here that still deserves to live."

"It's not about who deserves it." It's not. I don't deserve it, I know I don't, but I want to. I want to survive. The prospect of dying, of being nothing, it terrifies me.

None of that terror is in me right now. I'm not dead yet.

"Do you regret it?" I ask, as her eyes flicker back down the way he left one last time.

"No."

Her hand swings down, so unexpectedly that it's all I can do to bring my hand over my face as I see her arm descending. Pain explodes all along my palm and I feel the blood splatter hot onto my face, along my closed eyelids.

When I crack open my eyes she's still standing above me, soaked in her own blood, and there's a pen driven directly into the center of my hand, the tip bursting out through my skin.

"No," she repeats. "I really don't."

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

A lot of things happen at once.

A cannon fires right at the same time I hear someone come through the stairwell door. I'm sitting in the corner of the open-ended hallway, taking the smallest bite of bread I can possibly manage when someone goes tearing through the hallway so fast they don't even see me.

I rise into a crouch, peek over the desk I'm crouched behind, and they're already gone.

Well. That's something.

My arms are laden when I creep out into the hallway after them - the backpack and half a loaf of bread, two axes and a handful of knives. It looks like they only had a backpack, which helps to calm me a little as I take my time going after them.

They can't go on running forever.

In fact, it's not even close to forever. I can hear them slowing, and their breathing is labored, but it doesn't sound like it's from exhaustion. I don't even how to describe the noise, if I'm being honest, but I know it's nothing good.

The sudden noise of the anthem blaring out startles me. I've been trying not to think of it too much, the faces in the sky each night. The footsteps ahead of me slide to a a halt instantly, though, and I slow until I catch sight of them, silhouetted in front of a nearby window, staring out into the sky.

It would take a lot to not recognize Zion, tall as he is, but this is different. He stares out the window, oblivious to my presence, as the sky lights up once again.

It's only one face - the girl from Three, and his expression crumples.

I've never seen someone give in like that, not visually.

It's when the sky goes dark again, no other faces appearing behind hers, that it really goes downhill. Even feet away from him I can see the sheen to his eyes, the way his nails are digging into his palms. Struggling to keep it together.

I know that feeling better than most people.

I could walk over there right now and kill him. Even hulking as he is it probably wouldn't take much, not with his guard down. I watch him turn, ready to walk back the way he came, and I don't move. I should be moving. Even with no weapon, he's twice the size of me.

When he notices me, nothing happens. He very slowly looks up at me when his eyes land on my feet, expressionless. Everything else has been very clearly sucked out of him, because of what he just saw. That doesn't make any sense, but nothing's supposed to.

"Just kill me," he says, so quietly I'm straining to hear him. "Just— please just kill me, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to."

I don't know who the words hurt more - me or him.

It's different, than it was with Anya. When someone's fighting back against you tooth and nail, with everything they have. Zion doesn't look like he'd lift a finger against me even if he _did_ have the energy for it. His shoulders are slumped, everything in his posture screaming defeat, over and over again. It's nearly deafening, and there's not a single noise in the hallway.

"God, I'm sorry," he says. Clearly it's not meant for me. "I'm so sorry."

It could be for anyone. All the people he's met, his friends, his family. The girl who's face was just in the sky.

I'll never have the privilege to know.

He's still looking at me, waiting for it. Waiting for something that'll end his life.

I'm about to shake my head when the door behind him creaks open.

It's so dark I almost don't see anything at all, just the pale, hard surface of the door as it very slowly inches open, and a head pokes through from the other side. After a moment they step out into the hallway, feet almost silent, a lone knife reflecting the red light of the moon back at me.

"Nadir," is all Tanis says, no question about it. Just the slightest bit of disbelief.

A smile fights its way onto my face, and it's never felt so wrong.

Zion stares between the two of us, but even with that, nothing changes. Tanis won't know what's going on, not really. Not unless I tell her, and I'm not even sure I have the words for that.

I don't think he does either.

"I'll - I'll make it as quick as I can," I inform him, and he nods. Tanis' eyes widen, just a bit, but she doesn't step forward. Not to stop me, or ask what's going on. I should've known, that she would show back up eventually. We're not that different, me and her. I don't think we ever were.

I step towards him, two feet away, and then one, and bring one of the axes down towards his chest.

I didn't think about the momentum. It cracks in, dead center, like the layers of his clothing aren't there at all and he hits the ground hard at my feet. Something like a gasp tears it's way out of his throat when I yank the blade back out, but nothing happens. One of his hands creep closer to the hole in the center of his chest, and there's blood at the corner of his mouth, but he's not dead.

I don't even know if he's dying.

A hand wraps around my own, and I stop. Tanis doesn't look me in the eye, but stares down, lips pressed together so hard they're white. Slowly, she crouches down by my feet. Her hand never leaves the top of my own but she leans forward, just the slightest bit, and then her knife is at his throat.

There's already blood on it, I notice, somewhere in the back of my mind. And then all of his.

It's almost instantaneous, but nowhere near quiet. I can hear every wet, gasping breath he takes as blood bubbles up out of the line in his throat, but that coupled with the hole already present in his chest and his eyes slip shut in mere seconds.

Tanis stays on the floor for a moment, and then uses my hand to pull herself back up. I don't really feel inclined to let go. It's human contact, no hurt attached to it, and I'm the one that ran away from _her._

"Long time no see," she says quietly, and then squeezes my hand.

I cling to that feeling, that reassuring pressure for a second, and I don't let go.

I don't think there's any need to.

* * *

 **Isi Akiloff, 17 years, District Five Female.**

* * *

Shirin thinks he can keep me locked up.

Jokes on him.

Maybe he thinks that because he bandaged my fingers up, or my lack thereof, I owe him something. Also a big, fat joke. I don't owe him shit. He's still following me around regardless. If he wanted me to be truly grateful he wouldn't have let it happen in the first place. He would have been quick enough to stop her.

If he ever even planned on doing that. For all his words about not letting her go, he certainly didn't try very hard, now did he?

The cornucopia has been empty for days. There's been no point in hiding out there, not with the risk of one of the bridges being torn apart at any moment. Even now it hangs away into the emptiness, defying gravity itself. You'd think something so heavy would have cracked away by now.

I place a foot on the glass framework of the bridge, and Shirin stays firmly inside.

The glass holds in place under my feet as I step further out, but he shows no signs of following me out. I just wanted a better look at the water, at what was constantly creeping closer to us. It's nothing but a mess, really. Everything broken finally gathered in one place, clouded an ugly, dark gray.

I put a hand on the cornucopia as I step closer to the final edge. Being on the bridge before wasn't this nerve-wracking before, but then again there wasn't any way off unless you went into one of the buildings.

Unless you were someone named Camden.

"You're going to fall off and drown," Shirin calls out after me, the epitome of concern as always.

"I hope so," I mutter under my breath. God, at this point it almost sounds tempting. Anything to get away from him. And to think I was willing to let Tanis run off and be alone with him before I wound up killing him. Even now, that sounds stupid.

It's cold. Freezing, really. The ends of my fingers throb with every sudden movement, but it's not like there's a knife for my left hand anymore anyway.

Another constant reminder of how a minute and a half of stupidity can change everything.

If only the face in the sky had been hers. That would have been the end of at least one of my problems. Now she's out there, and Nadir is still running around somewhere too. Too many problems, not enough time to deal with them.

"You done?" Shirin asks, and I scowl down at the water. It really does seem more tempting than turning around and going back to him.

I turn around anyway, but something in one of the windows far above us catches my attention. Just the barest glimpse of a human outline, and then another. It would be hard to make them out even in proper lighting, but I think at least one of them is blonde. It's a generous guess, but I can't be that far off.

"Who the hell was blonde besides One?" I ask him, and he makes a face.

"Why are you asking me like that was the type of thing I kept track of?" he responds, incredulous. "And why does it matter?"

"Because I think I just saw her."

If that really was her, then was that Blair with her? It didn't really look like him, but they all kind of blended into one another, didn't they? Both of the Fours are still out there somewhere, too. The group that I would have expected to stay together, if I'm being honest.

So if it's not Blair, then what does that mean for us?

Shirin finally takes a few steps out onto the bridge, just enough so that he can crane his neck upwards, searching out the same window.

"Four guy?" he guesses. "So where's Two?"

"Why are you asking me like I kept track?" I sneer back at him. "Maybe. Probably."

It doesn't make any sense, for them to be all split up again. All this time they could have been just waiting for the right moment to re-group with each other. Four of them would be enough to kill whoever's left in this arena, no doubt. They could probably do that with two of them if they got lucky.

"Think the other two are nearby?" Shirin wonders, although I get the sense that he's not really asking, nor does he really care what my answer is. That's two of them, right there, and I'd be willing to bet the other two aren't far off.

"You wanna find out?"

"You really think you're capable of taking on minimum two Careers with one hand?"

Trust the pseudo-Doctor to be getting all technical on me. As if he gives a shit what I do to my hand trying to kill them. He'll just bandage it up again and call it a day and disregard the blood all over his hands as dirt, as merely an inconvenience.

"Let's go find out," I decide, and if he thinks he gets a choice, he's wrong.

He's never going to get one after this.

I stroll back off the bridge without a care in the world except for climbing higher. If an extra few seconds of staring is going to help Shirin get in the mindset, then I'll allow it.

Besides, the rain is going to start up again any minute now. The dawn will break as it always does.

Who knows if he'll ever get the chance to be outside again.

* * *

Friendly reminder to vote in the Final 3 poll if you haven't done that already. At this point I'm unsure if there's even a point behind a Victor poll, because I feel like I know who'd win it. Or at least one of the few options. But we'll see, and I'll let you guys know.

Yes, I know this probably hurt the vast majority of you. Don't worry, it hurt the hell out of me too, if that makes any of you feel better. This felt like the longest hike to the halfway point ever, even though Mayday was virtually the same. Technicalities.

Also, it was lovely getting more than like, a review or two last chapter. That was really nice. So thank you guys so much for that.

Until next time.


	29. How To Die Alone

Arena, Day Eight.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

It's weird to be around someone who I'm mostly convinced isn't going to kill me in my sleep.

The thing is, Nadir would have every right to. I hadn't seen her in so long, was convinced that I never would. To be fair, I was also pretty convinced that I was never getting out of my previous alliance alive.

I think we'd have every right to reverse it, too, for me to want to kill her. But I don't want her dead. That's the last thing I want. I've understood since day one why she ran, why she tried to put as much distance as she could between us and herself. It was smart, even. She's the one laden with weapons and some food, Zion's backpack now hanging off her shoulders.

I'm still waiting for it to hit, the realization that I helped her kill someone. I've seen how it's crushed people, watching in the years before now. I'm constantly waiting for that pain to land on my shoulders, for the grief to finally rise up, and it doesn't. That horror didn't hit me when I saw Isi's fingers hit the floor either, or when she stalked down the stairs to kill Nadir's District partner, when Shirin walked out into the rain to kill a girl who looked too small to even be here.

Maybe it never will. Maybe I'll never have the look in my eyes that Nadir had last night, when he asked for it.

I know we're similar, but maybe not as much as I thought. There was something in her eyes there, a war going on in her head that I probably won't ever be privy to.

At the end of the day, it still ended. That's all that matters.

Shirin's backpack is almost completely empty, save for the first aid kid and one of the water bottles. I have no idea where the other is. Zion's first aid kit is half empty, and while the majority of the food is gone there's water in there, too. Hopefully enough to last us until the end.

I can see myself going to the end with her. I've never allowed myself to think something that dangerous, until this point.

I don't know if she feels the same way, but the way she handed me an axe last night says a lot more than any words ever could.

"You alright?" Nadir asks quietly. I don't know how long we've been walking in silence, but it's never felt awkward.

"Yeah. Just thinking."

"'Bout what?"

"About how much I'm going to have to apologize if Shirin and Isi come after us."

She smiles, and anyone watching probably doesn't understand how she could. It's a complete turnaround from what happened last night, from the dead body lying in front of the two of us.

"I think we could take them," she says. "There are worse things in the world than the two of them."

"Sounds like you're speaking from experience there."

Nadir hums under her breath, and I figure that's about the most agreement I'm going to get. There's no need to pry. There's only a certain amount of time at least one of us has left, and I don't want to spend every second of it reminiscing on all the bad things that have happened. Here or back home. It's not like I've even had anything terrible to me before. I'm _normal,_ by all rights and associations. I don't have any reason to be reacting the way I am - my reactions are for people who have been through worse times, who have seen things like this in front of them before.

It just doesn't add up. And it doesn't have to.

"I am sorry, about before," Nadir continues. "I should have at least gotten you to come with me."

"Well, we're both alive, aren't we? It worked out alright."

Relatively speaking, anyway. We're both deep into the sleep deprivation side of things, hungrier than we'd like to be. Neither of us got here because of luck. Sure, it could have been a lot easier if I had went with her at the beginning, but who really knows? For all we know it could've gone worse.

Speaking of sleep deprivation, though, it's getting easier by the minute to notice how tired she actually looks. I know I didn't have it the greatest, almost constantly keeping one eye open because I was afraid of getting knifed in the back, but Nadir hasn't had anyone. She probably hasn't slept for more than a few minutes at a time, always wondering if any noise she heard was something bad. Something that could kill her.

"We can stop, if you want," I offer, and she looks back at me. Her footsteps slow to a halt, and I'm not sure she even realizes.

We spent most of last night wandering, too, and I'm not sure if that was because we didn't quite know how to work together after a week apart, or if she was too afraid to sit there with Zion's words ringing over and over again in her ears.

"You can sleep for a few hours. I'll keep watch. I don't mind."

I'm nowhere near as tired as she looks. I don't know if I'd even be able to get to the point she's at right now without passing out.

She bumps her shoulder gently against mine and looks around. "And to think I left you behind."

I shake my head, but I smile too. Yeah, maybe we could have had it better since the start, but at least we're trying now. It's better late than never. For all we know something terrible is going to happen tomorrow and this will be the last amount of solid sleep she ever gets, the last time I'm ever able to sit next to someone and know that I'm safe for the time being.

It could be the opposite though. Something incredible could happen too.

We'll just have to wait and see.

* * *

 **Shirin Azami, 17 years, District Three Male.**

* * *

I know two seconds after we start moving that this isn't going to go the way Isi's imagining it is.

For all we know what Isi saw was a trick of the light, and all four of them really are together. If we stumble on all of them, at the same time, we'll be dead in two seconds flat. She might be able to take one of them with her, but I don't see anything else happening. Not before one of them fucking decapitates her, and then me before I manage to run all of two feet away.

So right now we're headed in their vague direction, but they could be long gone. We could be walking directly into the dumbest decision that Isi's ever made, and she'll still probably blame me for it.

At least Early's finally bit it. Whatever happened to her had to have been better than what I would have done, had I ever saw her.

You'd think someone who lost three and a half fingers and two knives would be more cautious about this type of thing, and yet here I am. Still following along behind her because I really don't have anything better to do, if you think about it.

I told myself I wouldn't die for her, wouldn't die for anyone.

The prospect looks more and more likely to happen the longer we walk on, with no sign of anything.

The water has accelerated, lapping over the bridge now, flooding the Cornucopia. By the end of the day it'll be stories up from that. We're all so close together by this point that it's a miracle that we haven't found them yet. Two of them have to be making a decent amount of noise, and four of them? Should be loud enough to tear this whole place down.

Isi's anger is inching higher and higher to what the officials are probably calling a breaking point. Apparently her personality is trying to make up for her lost fingers.

That lone knife is the only thing keeping my head screwed on straight, the fact that she can't do as much damage with one knife as she'd really like to. That's concerning for who we're searching out, too, but who knows what kind of weapons they have. Maybe they don't have any.

Whoever's blind, foolish optimism is rubbing off on me, I don't want it.

Isi kicks half a chair out of her way, which strikes me as a tad dramatic. I would say so, if I wasn't the second most dramatic person in this arena, save for her.

The noise is concerning, though. Save for the vultures and the damned grim reaper, nothing in here has been causing any noise, not unless you count all the rats scuttling around. A chair hitting the opposite wall and then splintering into even further pieces than it already was; it's _asking_ for someone to come and kill us. I'm beginning to think what Isi said on the bridge was more accurate than I thought. God, do I wish.

The shadow that flickers in the next doorway makes me think otherwise.

Isi hasn't noticed. She probably thinks it's another one of the _actual_ shadows, the kind that form into something bigger, more dangerous.

"Stop," I say, and that's too loud as well. Isi actually listens, and cranes her head back to look at me, confused. Or irritated. Both, probably.

It's all too loud. If that really is a person, then—

Someone swings themselves out of the doorway and has a crossbow pointed directly at Isi's head before I can even blink.

—we're _fucked_.

Isi is the last thing on my mind as I dive to the right, my shoulder sending the door crashing in. An arrow goes shooting through the spot I had been standing, and there's the sound of something hitting the wall. Isi, probably, just managing to get out of the way in time.

These aren't the two we were looking for. I almost wish we had found the other two.

I scramble back for the door. I'd rather lock myself in here for the next foreseeable amount of hours then deal with whatever's out there. Let Isi make her final bad decision on her own. That's all this is.

Someone catches the door from the other side before I even have it half-closed. Their arm nearly gets crushed in the gap as I shove as hard as I can from the other side, but they don't really seem to care. They're stronger, too, no surprise there, but I only have maybe another two inches to get it closed. I could do it. It's not far.

"You gonna let me in?" Blair asks, and those are _definitely not the two we were looking for._ Why did we have to find what is arguably the worse of the two pairs, if the other two really are together?

There are ways out of this. There are ways out of everything. The window is big enough to climb through. I can't see what's below it from here, if there's another window to climb through, or maybe a balcony. For all I know it's just the water. What would I rather fall down, drown or get caught in the middle of whatever's going to happen in this room if he gets in?

I can still hear fighting out in the hallway. How Isi isn't already dead yet is beyond me.

"You let me in or I break the door down. Your choice."

What kind of fucking choice is that?

It won't take him long to break the door down. Even though I can't see them he must have weapons too. Celia can't be the only one.

Window it is, then.

I shove at the door, one last time. Somewhere in the middle of it Isi shouts, and I can see the amount of her blood Celia's probably splattering all over the walls and floor. If she dies then that's maybe a few extra seconds of time for me. Maybe it'll be enough, maybe not. I don't really care.

I don't even make it halfway across the room.

The shove wasn't enough to fully close the door, and Blair's through it and covered nearly the entire distance before my hand even brushes the windowsill. Glass digs into my palm. Guess I have no choice but to do this the hard way then. If I make it to the window he'll be on top of me before I can get over it. He'll sooner throw me over the edge than let me drop any lower.

We all know he's got zero issues with throwing people off of things.

I turn around, the bonesaw the only thing between me and him.

It might as well not exist.

I narrowly avoid the swing of the first weapon, something makeshift, nails and shards of glass missing my nose by half an inch.

The other one, the _real one,_ cracks into my side before I can move again.

Something inside me splinters apart. I feel it. The spikes digging into my skin, the blood I feel start to flow instantly, that doesn't matter. Blinding, sharp pain shoots through my entire side and then up into my chest and my legs give out. The pain's too much, something I feel like I've seen on other people so many times and it doesn't prepare me for the burn, the lightning.

Someone shouts out in the hallway again, and I can't tell who. Christ, she's still alive. Blair looks down at me, and then points one of the maces at me.

"Stay there."

He goes sprinting back out into the hallway. Isi was always the bigger target, always the one that was going to hit harder.

I'll be dead before he gets back in the room.

I know it. I don't think he does. It hurts to breathe, pain lancing through my chest and taking a hold of my heart every time I inhale. It feels like my heart's going to explode, the tightness in my chest nearly suffocating. I can feel my heart in every inch of my body, in my side when I bring my hand up to touch it. Even that hurts, is almost too much to do. There's blood, slippery all over my fingers, but the slightest bit of pressure against my ribs confirms it.

Some of my ribs are fractured. Broken, probably. One of them has punctured a hole in my lung from the force of the hit. I have minutes, probably. Less than that, if it's really bad, and it feels bad. My breath is already coming in short, shallow gasps. There's not enough air. My fingers can't possibly be blue already, but it looks like they are. I can hardly sit up enough to tell.

I let my head thunk back against the floor. Fuck, does it hurt. I didn't think something could hurt this bad, this suddenly. Suddenly all of the screaming made sense, when someone would get pulled through our front door, hardly able to stand with their ribs in pieces inside of them.

It makes too much sense.

There's more shouting now. Every scream sends a deep, shooting stab of pain right past my heart. For how loud my heart's beating, it doesn't feel like I have one at all.

Someone's still screaming, frantic bursts of movement just outside my range of vision, and I let my eyes close.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

When Blair shoves his shoulder into the door and goes after Shirin, I know, for the time being, that I've been left alone with the worse of the two demon twins.

Not really an issue, if I'm being honest.

She avoids the first arrow, aimed directly between her eyes, but hits the wall so hard to get away form it that there's nowhere to go. The second arrow grazes the edge of her shoulder, deep enough that there's instantly a dangerous level of bloodflow down her left arm.

She's one person with one knife, bloodied and bandaged fingers, and I already know she won't die easy.

She charges directly at me. Bold strategy for someone that I could probably knock over in two seconds flat. There's no room in this damn hallway. I can stretch both my arms out and nearly touch both walls. I move to the side but she still gets an arm around my waist and I throw the crossbow down the hallway. Guess that's a no go right now, and I really don't want her grabbing a hold of it any time soon.

She's still got a hold on me but I wiggle the sword out anyway, grabbing a knife in the other hand as I let her take me down to the ground.

I twist the both of us before we even hit the floor and she lands hard at my side. There's no noise from the other room, and the silence is almost terrifying in and of itself.

Her knife comes stabbing down towards my eyes and it meets the edge of my sword instead, the two metals clashing together between us.

Like I said, it's only one knife.

I bury my own knife in her forearm and she screams as she rips herself away from me, kicking at my legs. And to think she was the one that brought us down to the ground. It rips through the skin from her elbow to her wrist, a slick of blood pouring all over the floor as she wiggles away.

She's a mess. There's blood all over both of her arms, like she dipped them both in a bucket of paint.

"You're fucking enjoying this, aren't you?" she spits.

"You're the one talking," I point out. I'm not taking any pleasure in this. Sure, it'll be nice to see the two of them finally fucking dead, instead of running around here and terrorizing whoever they damn well please, but that doesn't mean I wanted to be the one who did it.

Now that I'm here, I really, really don't care.

She's hardly able to hold onto her knife, with how slippery her hands are. There's blood dripping rhythmically down to the floor below her, blending in with the sound of the rain outside.

My arrows lay on the ground between us, having spilled out of the quiver when I hit the ground, and she takes them all in a second before I do.

Isi throws herself back to the ground before I'm able to cross the distance and knock her away from them, and I land half on top of her. Her hand closes around one before I'm able to drag her any further away. Her feet are kicking frantically, even as I start dragging her away. The arrows go spinning down the hall, save for the one she's got clutched tightly in her hand.

If she thinks one arrow is going to kill me, she's sorely mistaken.

I see it flashing towards my arm, but I couldn't care less. It's blocking my chest, my side, the important things. The arrow sinks into the skin in the middle of my arm and it burns only for a moment before the adrenaline takes back over. My hands are still holding onto her, still controlling where she goes and what she does, and that's what matters. Nothing else.

I spin her around towards me and grab her hand, bending backwards. The knife hits the ground between us with a clatter.

Blair practically slides out of the room just down the hall.

Great timing as always.

It's hard to get the sword up between us, close as we are, and it's possibly the shittiest angle ever, but even that doesn't matter.

Blair smashes the mace against her back. Her shoulder, maybe, or over top of her spine. I don't get to see. She hits me hard, as the force of it sends her crashing against my chest. The sword slips in just under her chest and her weight only drives it in even further. It also sends me flying right to the floor, hitting the ground with a thud with Isi on top of me, and the sword breaks free from a point near the middle of the back.

"Ow," I say flatly. The arrow is still sticking out of the middle of my arm, waving unsteadily from how hard I landed. Blair stares down at me.

"You alive down there?"

"Sure am," I manage. She doesn't look heavy, but apparently she is. He grabs both of her shoulders and rolls her off of me, the sword coming free with a sick-sounding squelch as she hits the ground next to me. There's so much blood - all over the floor, on all of my weapons, coating the spikes of Blair's mace. It's all over me, too.

"You look like a serial killer," Blair informs me. "Also you have an arrow in you."

Like I hadn't noticed. He grabs the hand of my good arm and then leans down until he can hook his arm under my shoulder, pulling me unsteadily up to my feet. Judging by how much blood he gets all over his hands and arms just for pulling me up, a serial killer is probably the generous term.

"You okay?" he asks, still holding onto both of my arms, and I nod. "Alright, hold on for a second, I'm just gonna—"

Two cannons shatter the almost eerie quiet that has settled back over the hallway, and Blair looks back to the room he had gone in, confused.

He came back out of the room so quick, but that really wasn't a surprise. Shirin was never a fighter. So quick, apparently, that he thought he hadn't even killed him in the first place. That's the confusion now, but you're not going to hear me complain about it.

"That's convenient," I say flatly, and Blair turns back to me. There's a half-smile on his face, and neither of us should be smiling right now, but I get it. I completely get it.

"Man, Dimara and Rory are not going to be pleased."

In the moment I had forgotten about that. _Don't do anything stupid._

It hits me now, and I start laughing.

Anyone else would be looking at me right now like I'm insane, but Blair starts laughing too, and god is this all so stupid.

And wow, are they going to be so _pissed._

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

Neither of us move when the screaming starts up.

It's not like we've found anything anyway. No damn point in continuing to walk around aimlessly. It's echoing around too much to tell where it's coming from, at first, but gradually it trickles down into nothing at all.

Rory's staring down at the floor, like he can see through the building to whatever's happening, most probably below us.

There's been signs of other people. Water on the floor where there's no window close by to have made it in the first place, a door cracked open in a hallway where the others are all shut tight. It doesn't make sense that we can't find anything. It's like everyone else has managed to disappear into the walls. Or maybe the vents. That's pretty much the only place we haven't looked at this point.

In the very least, it seems to have cleared Rory's head out a little bit. That's probably why he now looks so overwhelmingly concerned, as he stares at the floor between his feet like it holds all the secrets to the universe.

"I'm not the only one who has a really bad feeling about that, am I?" Rory asks, and I was really hoping he wouldn't say it.

I was already thinking it. There's only two people we know are anywhere below us for sure, and if I go downstairs and Blair and Celia are still sitting in that room, minding their own damn businesses, then I'll probably pass out. Literally anything else in the world happening is probably more likely than that. You'd have to be blind not to see that, and we're not.

"Let's go," I sigh, and can only pray that they're not dead.

Rory leads the way back down the stairs, clutching tight to the bow the whole while.

If they're dead... I don't even want to think about it. There won't be any coming back from that. Rory will fall apart. There won't be anything left for me. Getting back home, back to Kali, it's always been priority number one. But they've rapidly becoming priority number two, faster than I thought was possible. One day they weren't there and the next they had skyrocketed so high it would seem stupid to anyone other than us.

Scratch that, even I think it's stupid. But there's nothing I can do about it now, is there? They're here, and there's no getting rid of them, not when they've burrowed so far under my skin.

Not unless they really are dead. But I'm not willing to confront that thought just yet.

We could be running past so much. So many people, for all we know. Our footsteps echo through the stairwell and bounce back off the walls, but it's something to focus on as we get further and further down. I didn't even look at the floor we left them on but Rory apparently knows, because he stops at the next landing and hauls the door open, holding it for me.

He steps out into the hallway and notches an arrow, but keeps it pointed at the ground. I've never been more thankful in my life that they brought a spear with the thought of me in the backs of their minds than right now.

One more corner, and then that'll be where we left them.

Rory pauses and I edge closer to his side. Can't see anything, not with this angle. Should I be glad I can't?

I nod and he steps around the corner, the arrow a clean line down the rest of the hall, and then nearly drops the bow.

Well, that can't be good.

I round the corner and Blair and Celia are standing about halfway down, both covered in blood.

Or, at least Celia is, but I can see where blood is spreading rapidly down Blair's arms just because he's dared to hold onto her this long. He cranes his head back to look at us, eyes widening.

"Act casual," he says, and then _smiles_.

"I fucking hate you," I inform him, and Celia's smile rapidly crumbles into something closer to a laugh. God, I really do. I can't ask one thing without it being completely ignored, can I? Rory all but smacks a hand over his face but is already walking towards them. I can't tell if he's just that exasperated or trying to ignore the carnage all around their feet. Probably the latter.

There's a body inside the room to my right - Shirin. Mostly intact too, which is a surprise in and of itself. The body on the floor in front of me, which was apparently once Isi, didn't have the same fortune. It's a miracle I can even make out her face. At least that explains where all the blood came from.

Rory's holding onto Celia's arm now, examining the fucking _arrow_ sticking out of it like that's a perfectly normal thing to be looking at. Celia swats Blair's hand away when he reaches for it.

"You, don't touch. You're not going to be gentle about it."

"You wound me."

"I'm gonna wound you in a second," I announce, and then shove him to the side to make room for me in the little circle. "How much of this blood is actually yours?"

She nods towards the arrow. "Just that. Swear, we're fine. For all we know they were looking for the two of you, so—"

"So you're welcome," Blair interrupts, and then dives out of the way when I attempt to hit him, disappearing into the room where Shirin's body is. He reemerges with a bonesaw clutched in his hand, along with the other two weapons he already has. That's about the least reassuring thing I've ever laid eyes on in my entire life, and I've seen some shit.

"We're fine," Blair emphasizes. "Thought it would be harder, actually. Everything is all fine and dandy and it will remain that way, don't worry about it."

"That's up for debate." It really is. We're all fine right now, somehow, when things could have gone so disastrously wrong in the first place. Who knows how many days we have left, though, all four of us together. This was one close call of many more to come, I'm sure. I wasn't lying when I said they'd all gotten under my skin, and really, this has only confirmed it.

Celia hisses as Rory snaps the arrow clean in two and the broken piece of wood hits the ground and rolls against my boots.

"Just trust me," Blair says, as I turn back to him again. And I do, despite whatever else I've said. "I've got an idea."

"Your ideas are always terrible," Rory reminds him.

Blair just smiles.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

Something awful is going to happen.

There isn't any reason for me to think it. Nothing's changed, not really. The sky continues to grow darker, to the point where I'm just waiting for the rain to stop like always. I'm becoming more and more convinced by the second that Kelsea's literally fallen asleep on my shoulder, but I can't look back without accidentally jostling her off, and if she really is asleep I don't think she'd appreciate it.

I also don't think she'd appreciate another spiel on the impending doom I'm pretty sure we're all going to get caught in the middle of.

We lost two towers, three and six. Tomorrow's day nine. What could possibly happen?

Maybe they thought that the quicker they brought us all together, the quicker we would all die. There are still ten of us left. If something happens tomorrow, if the tower gets swallowed whole by the rapidly approaching waves or crumbles entirely into the water, what will happen to all of us? Maybe they're banking on one of the Fours to survive at the end of the day, but with all of that stacked against us? Even that doesn't seem too likely.

I stop in a room with a balcony and poke my head out over the edge just as the rain stops. The moon appears, peeking out from between the clouds, and I look down.

It's hard to tell how far down the Cornucopia really was, now that it's gone. The water finally crested over the top of it hours ago, and who knows how many feet of water it's hidden underneath now.

It's terrifying to see it rising that fast. Any moment now one of us could be over the edge, water rapidly filling our lungs, and there'd be no way out of it.

The anthem ringing out is enough to distract me even if it's only for a few minutes. Kelsea's head jerks up suddenly from my shoulder, her eyes wide.

"We're good," I say quietly.

"Did I fall asleep?"

"Was wondering that myself."

She drops her chin back on my shoulder, blinking heavily. "Sorry."

I shake my head, but the faces that appear in the sky brush away all other thought. _Both_ of them are dead? And here I thought that after the bloodbath, the ones left were practically going to be indestructible. It certainly seemed that way, and suddenly two of the people I thought we had to fear the most are dead, just like that. It also means that Farren is still out there, somewhere. Probably still alone, the way I left her.

"That's good for us," Kelsea murmurs, but she looks troubled. Probably for the same reason I am.

"Unless whatever killed them tries to kill us next."

That's exactly what I'm worried about, what I'm sure has already occurred to her. Would it be the Careers, or someone else? No matter what the option is, I don't see both of us alive at the end of it. If someone attacks us, I'll have to drop Kelsea to have any chance at fighting back. That leaves her alone while I probably get myself killed, at the end of the day, and then she dies too.

I don't know if there's any way out of this.

I should stop thinking about it. There's no point. If something's going to happen I'm not going to be able to do anything to stop it. The whole world is moving around us right now, evolving and changing to see what will happen. All we can do is hope that if things really do collapse, in whatever way, that we manage to climb our way out of the rubble.

"Do you mind if we stop here?"

Kelsea shakes her head and tightens her arm around my shoulders as I crouch down and lower her down back to the ground. She scoots back until she's leaning against the wall and watches as I shut the door, dropping back down by her side.

"I'm going back to sleep on you," she informs me, and then drops her head back on my shoulder. Considering she did the exact same thing last night after keeping watch for six odd hours, I'm really not surprised. It's not really that difficult to be more comfortable than the wall, or the floor. Besides, it's freezing. It's almost a surprise that my fingers haven't frozen right off by now, or her entire foot. She's managed to fit it back in her sock but not the boot, which still sits in our backpack. She's never complained about it.

Kelsea shoves her hands under her arms and I shift until I can wrap my arm around her shoulders, which she seems to appreciate as she burrows in closer.

"Wake me up in a few hours," she mumbles.

"Got it."

I don't know what good one of us always staying up does. If that door were to burst open right now, I don't know what we could to do stop whatever was on the other side. Who knows if we'll ever figure it out.

I look back out the open balcony, watching the water. It's just a matter of time. Everything's always a matter of time.

* * *

Victor poll is up because I'm bored and unoriginal. Obviously the people who died this chapter are not a part of it. So if anyone scrolls down here, looks at this, and then immediately goes and looks at the poll, you're gonna get it. Because I'll totally know, obviously.

(I almost put it up yesterday without thinking. That would've been a doozy for the one or two of you who always notice I have it up a day or two before I update.)

Shout-out to all of you who are graduating/have already graduated, and good luck to the people that are still swamped in tests and exams, because I feel like that's literally every single one of you. I'm old? Reviews are much appreciated as always. I haven't actually gotten six reviews since the chapter seven mark, so getting that number this far in meant a lot.

My condolences to the people who always think I'm gonna do the complete opposite of what I actually do. At this point I'm not sure if I laugh or cry, at the complete totality of how amazing some of your predictions are for someone who literally never goes through with them. Probably cry.

Until next time.


	30. How To Live Forever

Arena, Day Nine.

* * *

 **Farren Laboy, 17 years, District Six Female.**

* * *

The building shakes, just once, under my feet.

I have no idea how many floors are left, until I hit the roof. There's nine other people, somewhere up here. I don't know what's worse, that thought or the water that continues to rise below me, driving me further and further up.

The building moves again. I can't tell if I'm imagining it or not. It all adds up. Maybe the weight of the water is finally causing it to crumble from the ground up. The roof is the last point of salvation, if it is one at all. Everyone probably has the same idea I do, but there's no one else in the stairwell except for me and the water I can see, maybe five stories down or so.

The stairs end. There must be another one, at the opposite end of the building. I push the door open and the entire frame shakes underneath my hand.

They can't do this. They can't destroy the last thing still standing with all of us in it.

Can they?

They've pulled everything down around me, so why would they stop now? Vance and Casper are both gone, in two different ways that have started blending together into one. The Three girl had looked so sure of herself, standing there above me. Even bleeding out she had been convinced she could kill me, that the hole in the center of my palm was the beginning of a long list of things she was going to do to me.

It still hurts, even wrapped in bandages. My blood had soaked through almost instantly, but it was everywhere anyway. When I had finally managed to get a hand back on the sword, when I had lunged half off my feet and the blade had sunken into the skin at her stomach, almost too easily, her blood had been all over me too. The wound in her side would have killed her eventually anyway, but not before I finished her off.

I'm a hypocrite. I'm an awful person. I had wanted nothing more than to crawl away and lock myself in a closet and scream, or sob until I couldn't anymore, but nothing would come out. It feels like I'm run completely dry at this point, save for the blood that I can't scrub away.

It was worse, when Zion's face had appeared in the sky with hers. He hadn't lasted five minutes without her.

At least she never had to find that out.

At this point I don't know what's keeping my feet moving. It's something mechanical. I wouldn't be surprised at this point if I was more robot than not. God, what the people in Six must be thinking of me now. I was the girl everyone went to for help, who no one was scared of because there was no point to it.

I'm more scared of myself than anyone else is.

I walk in a circle, once and then twice, before I realize I must have missed the stairwell somewhere along the way. It could be any one of these doors, for all I know. I start opening them on the third time around. Maybe I'll just be stuck here, doomed to drown. I don't know what I'd do in that case, if I'd just wait for the water to cover my head or if I'd jump out the window before it ever got close and just let myself go.

It's so tempting. I hate that it's tempting.

The next door opens before I even get there. I see the doorknob turning, a second too late and only just manage to throw myself backwards to avoid walking right into it.

My heart nearly stops.

Vance steps out of the doorway with someone clinging to his back, calm for only a second before he realizes that I'm standing there. He takes a few frantic paces back too, his hands tightening around the girl's knees, and it's like someone pulls me out of a fog that I hadn't even realized I'd been in the middle of. It lifts, and the slightest bit of life trickles back into my limbs. Something in my brain reignites, turns back on. An on and off switch that hadn't existed until right now.

"Farren," he says, and it's nearly a question. Like he can't believe what he's seeing.

His eyes flicker down to the sword, still clutched tightly in my hand. The girl swallows.

"Put me down," she says, very quietly, but I still hear her. Kelsea. It's all coming back to me, one piece after another. After a moment's hesitation Vance carefully releases her, keeping a hold of her arms until she scoots backwards and braces herself against the wall, one of her feet hovering above the ground. That leaves him with nothing. Kelsea's got a backpack, too, and as I watch one of her hands dips into her pocket, her fist closing around something hidden inside.

He holds both of his hands up, cautiously. They're both empty. Does she have the scalpel? Is that what she's holding onto right now, so desperately?

If Kelsea's this scared already, then she thinks something's going to happen. She knows something I don't.

"Farren," he repeats, and my eyes snap back to him. One of his hands is held out, like I'm a nervous, terrified animal and he doesn't know how else to approach. His hand is shaking, just the slightest bit, and the building lurches beneath us again. He doesn't react. Am I just imagining it all?

I raise the sword, a mere few inches, and he stops.

"What does she know that I don't?" I ask, and Vance's eyebrows furrow in confusion. Kelsea straightens just the slightest bit and her hand is suddenly back in front of me. I can't see what's inside it, if it's the scalpel or something else.

"It's okay," Vance says quietly. "You're okay."

It's not. I'm not. That's exactly what he said to Casper, a minute before he wound up dead at Vance's feet. A minute before he ran off and my entire world fell apart in one fell swoop, like it never mattered at all.

"Vance." That's Kelsea's voice, now, and it all blends into one again into my mind, and the fog descends again.

He turns back to her, and I lunge.

She yells again, something that's half his name and just pure panic and he dives out of the way. No thought behind it, just anything to get out of the way as the sword arcs through the air. He throws himself back through the doorway just in time, as the sword comes down again. He's drawing me away from her, which is enough to nearly cut through the haze again. I don't care about her, though. I never have.

She's not getting away fast anyway.

I'm beginning to suspect he regrets giving everything to her, because now he has nothing but himself, standing in front of the open balcony. His hands are held out again, but he's not trying to get me to calm down this time. His hands are his last line of defense, blocking the way to his heart. To anything of importance, anything that matters.

That's the only thing that matters anymore. The quickest way to the heart.

And he already got mine ripped out, seven days ago.

He backs up, another pace. There's nowhere to go, not unless he thinks the water is a more promising fight than me. There's nothing he could say at this point, nothing that could make the sword fall out of my hand. Not unless he does it himself.

"I never wanted any of this to happen," he whispers. It hardly sounds like he's addressing me. Maybe Casper, who seemed so convinced that this was all Vance's fault in the first place. And maybe it was. Maybe if the two of us had just stuck together and shunned everyone else Casper would still be alive on the outside and me on the inside.

He won't move. It's almost infuriating, watching him stand there like a statue while my sword hangs in the balance between us, a foot away from him, while everything around us shakes.

Something shifts behind me. Vance's face twists, just enough to convince me that he really hasn't turned to stone.

Before I know it there are hands grappling at the backs of my shoulder, a heavy weight pressed against my back and something sharp, digging into the juncture of my neck and shoulder.

Vance moves.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

The shaking only gets worse when the hovercraft starts getting closer.

There's nowhere to go. Maybe the four of us would be able to survive the water, but there's no guarantee. What would we do, anyway? Just wait until we drown, one by one? In that case Rory's probably got it. Celia could give him a run for his money in the water, but with her arm hurt she'll probably tire sooner than he does. That's if the building doesn't crumble into the water and kill all of us anyway.

Even if we could find the six other people left in here, kill them all before the building collapses, then we'd have to turn on each other.

I can't do it. I already know I can't do it, and they're the exact same way.

When Celia said this wouldn't work, maybe it wasn't because she didn't think we could make it together. Maybe she was scared that we would, and when the end of the day came we wouldn't know how to crawl out the other side of it.

There's still a hovercraft, edging closer and closer. When I lean over the edge of the balcony the wind nearly knocks me off my feet. Someone screams, a few floors below, and it's lost in the sound of the howling wind and the rain spattering against my shoulders.

"Someone down there is dead," Dimara says, leaning around my shoulder. Not yet, anyway, but it's going to happen, and soon. That's the only reason why the hovercraft would be so close. Coming to collect a body, or what's left of it. That'll be five left, outside of the people in this room, and it still doesn't make a damn difference in the thoughts floating through my head.

"Please back up before it accidentally swerves to the left and takes your head with it," Rory asks, even though he's nearly as close as I am. The hovercraft is feet away from the building at this point, but very carefully moving downwards. Closer to where the fight is. Ignoring us watching it, because why would they, when we don't matter at all right now?

Celia's arm brushes against mine, the bandage wrapped around it, and it reminds me why the thoughts are there in the first place. I could've let Isi kill her, if I really wanted to, or killed her myself and blamed our enemies. But I didn't. I told Dimara yesterday that we would be fine, and I meant it.

I still mean it. I just hope I'm not a liar on top of everything else.

The building shakes again. Groans, really. I don't know what the water has been doing to it, this past while, but it's not good.

"We're fucked," Celia says flatly.

"No, we're not," I fire back, and the response feels instant. Queued up. I should've known I'd end up here regardless.

I just don't know how much of it is true.

"Since when are you Mr. Optimism?" Dimara asks. "Not complaining, but we really are fucked right now. Unless you really do have an idea."

She remembers what I said yesterday too. I edge as far out as I can onto the balcony, until my entire front is pressed up against the glass panel that keeps us contained in here. Dimara's hand lands on my arm, like she thinks I'm two seconds from going over.

Man, if only she knew.

"What are you thinking?" she asks. She still thinks I know what I'm doing. I don't even know what I'm doing.

"You're really not going to like it."

"Try me."

I jerk my head out towards the hovercraft, avoiding any eye contact. "Our ride's here."

I may be doing my best to avoid making any eye contact, but it doesn't matter in the slightest. I can _feel_ all of them looking at me, three sets of eyes lasered onto me like there's nothing else to look at.

"Excuse me?" Celia asks, voice a little strained. Dimara's hand tightens on my arm.

"Did you hit your head yesterday and not tell anyone?" Rory questions, and I know I didn't but it still feels a lot like the impact before the concussion. When you can see it coming but know there's nothing that you can do to stop it from happening.

The hovercraft is still so close, but no cannon. I'm never going to get any closer than this.

I take a step back from the edge and bring the mace down against the glass panel. It cracks, spiderwebbed lines traveling all across the glass. It falls away when I hit it a second time, the glass disappearing far into the water below. I feel three sets of hands reach for me at the same time.

"You're not fucking serious," Dimara spits, and I was right. I knew she wouldn't like this. "You seriously aren't."

"Do you mean like, our ride out of this building?" Rory asks. "Or, like—"

"Out of the arena?" I finish for him. "Yep."

All three of them are sputtering, struggling for words where there aren't any.

"You'll get a long overdue explanation. Once I—"

"Once you what?" Dimara interrupts. "Get on it? Smash through the side of it and hope for the fucking best? You'll be lucky to survive that, if someone inside it doesn't kill you first."

It's a chance I'm willing to take. A chance I have to take, if I want any shot of all four of us surviving this. There's no other way. I've known that since the second I set foot in this arena, that it was going to end like this, and a part of me was hoping it wouldn't. The weight of it was slammed onto my shoulders too fast, too painful to manage forever.

"What about everyone else?" Rory asks, and I turn back to him.

"Do you really think I'm thinking about everyone else right now? I'm thinking of approximately four people right now, and I'm one of them."

"We have to get everyone else," Rory says, in such a rush that I only manage to string together half the sentence before he takes off. God, he believes me. Even I wouldn't believe me, if I was in their position.

"Jesus _christ_ ," Celia snaps, and runs after him. We both wait a moment, but neither of them return.

There's another scream, from down below. The whirring of the hovercraft is growing louder, stronger. Dimara's hand is locked so tight around my arm it's starting to hurt. I wasn't lying when I said I didn't care about anyone else. The building shakes again, the strongest one thus far. How long do we have, before we all wind up dead because we decided to stand here?

"You're serious," Dimara says, looking up at me, and there's no hesitation in her voice anymore. No fear. There never has been.

"When am I ever not serious?" I ask, and she scowls back at me.

"Okay, fair enough. But I promise you. We're getting out of this."

I can't tell if it's the building shaking or her fingers around my arm. Maybe she's not showing fear, but she's feeling it. We all are. It feels like my heart is about to escape my chest, in whatever way it can.

Seren's words are ringing through my head, over and over again. Words that have stuck with me since the day I heard them back on the train, since she wiped that grin off my face in less than two dozen words.

 _Win, die, or get out. Get as many as you can out._

I've made my choice.

I look back at Dimara. "Let me go."

Her hand slides off my arm, so slowly that I can tell she doesn't want to. I take a deep breath.

I take a deep breath, and jump.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

Farren thought I couldn't walk, and I can't.

But I don't need to be able to walk to hit her.

It took everything in me to hobble over to them, as soundlessly as I could. Vance's eyes never gave me away, as hard as he struggled to keep his face blank, neutral. This was terrifying enough without her turning back to me and running me through.

I've hauled myself onto Vance's back enough in the last few days that jumping at Farren's back instead is one of the easiest things I've ever done.

The scalpel sinks in, somewhere along her shoulder, and she screams. She jerks forward, trying to throw me off, but I've already got one arm looped around her neck, holding on tight. I refuse to let go of the scalpel, half buried in her shoulder. It's one of the only things creating leverage for me at this point, slippery as my hand is, covered in her blood.

"Kels, move!"

I drop off her back and I feel pain lick all up my leg as both my feet hit the ground, but it's nothing in comparison to the second scream she unleashes as the scalpel comes free.

Vance slams into her stomach and sends the two of them crashing so hard to the ground that I nearly wince. The sword goes skittering across the ground and nearly back out into the hallway, but not before I dive towards it, ankle be damned. My ankle can wait a second.

I grab the sword and fling it back in Vance's direction. He's already managed to get free of her and has backpedaled up against the opposite wall, leaning down to scoop up the sword as it slides across the ground towards him. In two seconds flat he's got it in both hands, pointed directly at her. She struggles to her feet, in the middle point between the two of us, wavering.

"What are you going to do?" she asks. "It can't be any worse than what you did to him. It can't be."

She's talking about Casper. She has to be. And I saw the remorse written all over on his face when he even brought it up. It wasn't like Farren thinks it was, but is this even really Farren? It doesn't sound like her, doesn't move like she did.

The real Farren got left behind the night Vance left her, too.

Regardless of who she is now, she still doesn't want to die. One of her feet edges back to me. Maybe she thinks she'll have a better chance, if she goes around me and runs for it.

And maybe, if I didn't see the look on Vance's face, I'd be tempted to let her go. But he looks like he's never wanted something to be over this bad before, this desperately. He just wants all of this to be over. If Farren gets out of here, maybe it never ends.

Her foot moves backward, suddenly, and she's in the process of turning around when I dive forward again and slam into her side. She stumbles back towards Vance, a foot closer than she was before, and he was already giving chase. Already trying to run her down, because his compassion is either gone entirely or bubbling out into something he can't control.

The sword slams directly into the center of her chest, right out through her back, and nearly hits me in the eye. Even practically _skewered_ with it Farren doesn't stop moving, wiggling this way and that like she thinks it'll be enough. She twists in both of our grips, the sword the only thing keeping her pinned between the two of us. There's so much blood, all over the place.

She stops moving, finally, and Vance yells.

The noise sends a jolt right through the center of my chest, right where the sword is in Farren's own. He goes down to the ground, still holding onto her, and she lands nearly on top of him. I don't even know if she's alive when she hits the ground, and even though Vance's yell is still practically echoing around his eyes are still open, wide and hardly focused on me at all.

I shove her off of him and he lets the sword go with it. The building and the cannon shake everything at the same time, and when I look, finally, I know exactly why he yelled. In fact, I'm confused as to why he didn't yell _louder._

"Don't look down," I order instantly, and Vance immediately looks down.

Directly at the pair of scissors sticking out of his thigh.

"I'm gonna throw up," he chokes out, and then promptly thunks his head so hard back into the floor that I'm shocked he doesn't concuss himself all over again. He squeezes his eyes shut so tight it looks painful, but I think the scissors hurt the worst.

"We can figure this out," I say frantically, and he shakes his head. The entire building moves with him, swaying back and forth. I can _hear_ it giving way, hear the noises of things tumbling down and hitting the water below.

"We can't— there's nowhere to go, and I can't carry you, I can't—"

"It's okay," I manage. "It's fine."

He shakes his head again and reaches back out for the wall, face still twisted in agony. I don't know what's worse to him, the pain or Farren's body lying right next to him, her blood pooling all over the floor, nearly at his legs now.

"Vance, stop," I try, but he's already got a hold on the wall and is pulling himself unsteadily to his feet now. Somewhere, in a distant part of my mind, I can focus on the fact that he can hardly put any weight on his leg, and we _match now,_ and I'm nearly hysterical with the thought. Now is not the time to be thinking about this, not when these are the last few minutes I probably have.

The thought hits me like a freight train. This is it, isn't it? Neither of us are leaving this room.

"I'm sorry," he says, and then leans his head back against the wall. He doesn't see me shake my head.

It's not his fault. It was never his fault.

But it doesn't really matter now.

Footsteps come pounding down the hallway. Someone running away from the inevitable, or running to come kill us before time runs out. We can fight back, but it won't do any good. We're dead.

It's odd, to be standing upright, mostly, and know that you're dead.

But I know it.

And for the first time since I've been in here, accepting it doesn't scare me.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

I can hardly run fast enough.

Celia won't be able to stop me. I don't know if anyone would, not if every single person left in this arena came down on me at once. I'm in the stairwell before she even catches up with me.

"What are you doing?" she shouts, and I'm already a floor down.

"What do you think?"

"You don't know where anyone is!"

Yes I do. That's why the hovercraft was so close in the first place. There's been one cannon, the second that I opened the door, but at least one person down there is still alive. Maybe more. That's a start, even if it's not everyone.

Celia's stopped running and is staring down at me. "Five minutes! And if you're not back—"

"Got it!" I yell back. I can hardly hear her, hardly hear myself. What I do see, before I hit the floor that I'm so convinced is the right one, is her disappear through the door she's standing next to. Not back towards Blair and Dimara, if Blair's even still there. She's looking too. Trying to help me. I wish that I could go with her, that we didn't have to leave each other for this to happen. Clearly she was thinking the same thing, and I have no doubt that if I'm really not back in five minutes she'll come and drag me upstairs by the collar of my shirt.

A part of the ceiling gives way, and I hardly catch myself at the edge of the door the two of them are standing in.

Two of them. A third that's nothing more than a very dead body.

It occurs to me, in the second both of them look up at me, that I haven't thought this through at all.

They both look like hell formed and tried to drag them down by both ankles, though that's not a surprise, but—

"Why do you have a pair of scissors in your leg?" I manage, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

"Don't bring it up!" I did not imagine this tiny thing of a girl snapping at me, and yet here we are. In fact, I think she looks more likely to hit me than he does. Again, not a thing I thought I'd be thinking, if he didn't have a pair of scissors in him. I don't think I'd be fighting anyone either in that state. She's holding one of her feet above the ground too, though, somehow managing to inch back closer and closer to the boy. Right, Career, and I'm loaded with weapons and mostly twice her size and most of all, not injured in the slightest.

I really didn't think this through.

"Okay, listen," I start. "Neither of you are going to believe me, I get that, but I'd really rather not have to knock both of you out to get you upstairs, so if you could just cooperate for five minutes that would be fantastic."

"What?" she asks, and my brain is too scrambled to be articulate right now. If it ever even is.

I'm distracted, though, by the way the hovercraft suddenly veers so close to the building it nearly crashes into it. All I can see, directly between the two of them, is the way one of the windows in the side gives in, and someone goes disappearing right through the side of it.

Not someone. I know exactly who that was.

The boy very slowly looks over his shoulder, following my gaze. I don't have to see his face to know what utter confusion is.

"What the fuck," he says, very flatly. Like he's about two seconds from collapsing, and I'm not sure if that's from the leg thing or the hovercraft thing.

"I told you you weren't going to believe me," I respond, and both of them look at me now. Not like I'm about to kill both of them, and it's nearly a relief. I don't know many minutes out of my five are remaining. Probably not that many. I have zero doubts that Celia will come down here and really knock both of them out to get them to cooperate, and we don't have to do it like that.

I think.

"Can either of you walk?" I ask, and the resounding silence I get in response as the two of them stare at me is enough.

"Okay, I'm taking you first," I inform her, and grab her before she even has a chance to say otherwise, all but slinging her over my back. She hits me, once, in the shoulder.

"What, you can't take both of us?"

"I'm a Career, not _Invincible Man_." It's up for debate about even the former most days, too. It'll take me thirty seconds to get the both of us up the stairs, small as she is, and then I can come back. I'm really gonna be cutting it close for time here, but cutting it close is as good as we've got.

"You have to come back for him," she says, almost directly into my ear. As if I could live with myself if I dropped her off upstairs and then just stayed there myself. Five with her, six with him. Still three more people. We've still got a long way to go.

"Stay there!" she yells at him, just before I take off with her on my back, already headed back towards the stairs. I really don't think he has a choice in the matter. The stairs are shaking so badly that I severely doubt he'd be able to get up them on his own. Even I'm having a hard time staying upright, with her arms locked vice tight around my neck. It's keeping her where she is, though, and it's a constant reminder that I'm not the person that matters right now. I'm the last person that matters.

There's no sign of Celia, either. Five minutes may not matter, if she doesn't come back. I might have to go looking for her instead.

"Dimara!" I shout, before I'm even fully through the door and she comes stumbling out into the hallway as the building shakes again.

"She's yours now," I inform her, and practically drop her into Dimara's arms, only just managing to avoid screwing up her ankle, foot, whatever it is, even worse. I have no idea what we're supposed to do now, how we're all supposed to follow Blair. I don't even know what Blair's doing.

"Where are you going?" she shouts after me, but I'm already back at the door. No point in stopping now, no matter how worrying it all is. Nearing hysteria Dimara is not something I was ever hoping I'd have to experience.

"Back for him!"

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

I've never liked the sight of water less in my life.

I think Tanis is in agreement. We're not the Fours, not born and bred in the water like we don't know anything else. I prefer my feet on dry land, solid land, but this land is the complete opposite of solid.

Our only hope right now is that we get in the water and pray for dear life that there's something in there strong enough to keep us afloat while everyone else dies off. I'll be honest, it's not exactly the most promising idea I've ever come up with, but Tanis hasn't suggested anything better. It's better than getting your head split in two by whatever falls out of the ceiling first.

"I really don't wanna do this," she says, and I nod. We still haven't even decided who's going first, and I think that's mostly because neither of us want to admit that we want the other to be the one to take the first leap.

I really wanted to go home. I did. And it started to be less because of Thane and more because of myself, because I think for once I deserve a chance at a normal life. Maybe this was it. Maybe me considering winning the Hunger Games with too many kills to my name _normal_ was my first mistake there, and now I'm being punished for it.

At least I'll die without Thane's hands on me, and that's the most freeing thought I could possibly have.

"Oh, you two would still be together. That's convenient."

Tanis and I both whirl instantly at the third voice, but it's not really what I was expecting. Celia is standing at the juncture between hallways, staring at the two of us like she has all the time in the world. And in comparison to us, maybe she does.

I've got two knives in each hand almost instantly, Tanis with her axe, and Celia doesn't move.

If only everybody in the world had the ability to remain that unbothered by the sight of something like that.

"Two options," she says. "Either you two kill me, which I'd really rather you didn't, and I come back to haunt both of your asses for the three and a half minutes you'll last after you do it, or I turn around and you come with me."

I stare. Tanis looks at me out of the corner of her eye.

"Option three," I fire back. "One of the Careers in this damn arena ever makes an ounce of sense."

Celia smiles. "Not gonna happen. Believe me."

I thought I was on the fast track to trusting Tavian, and that got us nowhere at the end of the day. Despite how little I've been keeping track, I know that she's not the only one still left. There's several. More than I would've thought, by this point. They have something worked out, better than our alliance ever did.

"Okay, fine," she says. "Option four. Decide if you wanna be alive at the end of the day, and then let me know."

She waves, and then disappears. I blink.

A second later, she pops her head back around the corner. "Or not?"

And gone again. Both of us continue staring. Tanis takes a deep breath.

"I'm going after her," she announces, and then leaves me standing there as she takes off after her, axe still in hand. I stand there dumbly for a moment, because I have to be hallucinating. Did she just leave me? To follow a _Career_?"

"Tanis!" I yell, but she's already around the corner, and I literally don't have a choice in the matter. I chase after her, and it feels a little hard to breathe. Nothing ever makes any sense. What I do know, practically the only thing, is that both me and Tanis would probably be in the process of drowning right now, if Celia hadn't shown up. She could've let us go over the edge and watched, and she didn't.

Why didn't she?

I know the stairs are just around the corner. I know that, and yet I still nearly run into both of them.

Celia has stopped just inside the stairwell and Tanis has both her arms braced within the frame. I grab her back to stop myself. Both of them are staring downwards, at the rapidly crumbling staircase. In a minute, maybe two, this entire thing won't be intact. It's a miracle it's not already.

"Rory!" Celia shouts downwards, but I can't actually see around either of them to find out what's going on. Whatever it is, it's not good. Whatever it is, it doesn't make a single goddamn ounce of sense. Why did I expect any different?

"Three floors up," Celia says, and then all but shoves Tanis to the opposite end of the landing, headed rapidly down the stairs.

Tanis stumbles to a halt and does not continue ascending. I don't move either.

It's hard to see in the gaps between the railings, but she's headed towards her District partner, who's got a hold on the Eight guy? Something seriously wrong is going on here, and I don't think a single one of them has an explanation for it.

A piece of the ceiling hurtles down past my head and crumbles into a hundred pieces on the landing below me. One of the stairs literally gives way just as the three of them make it to the landing just below us. All three of them are stumbling towards us, breathless, but Celia looks up at me and scowls.

"If you two don't move you are on the fast track to being number two and number three on the list of people I'm kicking the shit out of in five minutes."

"Who's number one?" Tanis asks, but she's already moved halfway up the stairs to avoid getting on the list itself. I don't blame her.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out."

Even as she says it, I feel like I know. There's five of us here. We're headed upstairs - there's probably people up there too. But we all know who tends to get into the most trouble, year after year, like it's a stupid cycle they just can't get out of.

And Carnell's already gotten into too many fights.

Someone puts a hand between my shoulder blades, pushing me through the door three floors up even faster than I was already walking, nearly knocking Tanis to the ground in the process.

"Who are we missing?" Rory asks, like that makes any sense at all. Like I even know. He gets four absolutely blank stares in response, because everyone else has about as much idea as I do. Celia shakes her head at him, like that's the last thing on her mind.

"That's eight," he continues, looking around. "That's eight - who the hell is the ninth?"

Even as he says it, I see the realization dawn in his eyes. It still doesn't help me at all, but something in him clicks, and he basically deposits the Eight guy between my arms and Celia's, already edging back towards the stairwell. It's in even more disarray now.

"I knew this was going to come back to bite me in the ass," he grits out, and he narrowly avoids Celia's outstretched hands as he goes flying down the stairs.

"Rory!" she yells, but he's already gone.

He's already gone, and there's not a single thing we can do about it.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

I stop moving.

There's only so long one person can walk in circles expecting a miracle, and I've reached my limit.

I thought when I wrapped my hands around the scythe that something was bound to change. It had to. I didn't watch Laurel and Parker die, saw nothing but Early's face in the sky, just to die for nothing.

I shouldn't have been the last one standing, period. I wasn't the smartest, or the one most willing to fight. I wasn't anything that they were. Maybe it's kind of fitting that I can't see any way out of this that doesn't result in me winding up dead. Any one of the three of them would do something, other than stand here and stop because they didn't know what else to do. Even crying, screaming, would be better than this.

I'm so busy thinking about all the things I'm not doing that I don't even hear anyone behind me.

That's why, when someone grabs me, my brain practically shuts down.

It takes all of two seconds, and then someone's got two arms wrapped around me. My own arms are forced to my sides, the scythe nearly bouncing off the middle of my forehead. It's not a knife in the back, but it's not good. Kudos to whoever it is for not killing me outright, but I don't really see why they wouldn't.

"Don't freak out," they say, and that's all it takes for me to freak out.

All the thrashing in the world right now wouldn't do any good. He holds fast, even when I try to start moving, and all my feet do are kick around frantically for a few moments before I realize I'm not going anywhere fast. The last time I saw this guy he put an arrow in Parker's chest and now he's not letting me go, no matter what I do.

"Just let me explain something," he tries, and the temptation to just go for it and kick him instead of the air is getting really tempting.

"Wanna let me go?"

"Depends. Are you going to try and kill me the second I do?"

"Why don't you let me go and find out?"

Not the right thing to say, because he doesn't let me go. Would I even be able to kill him? Would I even _want to?_ It's all up for debate, right now, and I can't make sense of it one way or the other. It feels like I'm going to explode. That, or die on the spot. Either is probably possible with him holding onto me.

"You can hit me as many times as you want later," he offers. "I deserve it. But right now I just want you to listen to me. I _need_ you to listen to me. We can't have much time left."

"Yeah, I'd realized," I get out.

"Not what I meant. This isn't going to make any sense, but we're getting out of here. We've found everyone else - you're the last one."

My brain shuts down, restarts over and over again. No matter how many times I turn the thought over in my head it doesn't make sense. Would it ever? Any single person in the world could've said the same words and I don't think they'd make sense, not in any voice. He doesn't let me go, though, or waver in the slightest.

I watch as a crack appears in the ceiling, down at the opposite end of the hall, and swallow.

"If you want me to let you go and leave you here, I will," he says. "You don't have any reason to trust me, I get that. But I need you to, for five minutes. I don't want you dead too."

 _Too_. I squeeze my eyes shut and see it all over again, and I know he is too.

The ceiling cracks again, and then the entire thing gives away.

He barely throws us out of the way in time.

Suddenly, I've never been so grateful for him holding onto me. He drags both of us halfway down the hallway, the whole ceiling crumbling into pieces as we all but stumble into the corner next to the stairs. He's got an arm wrapped so tight around my chest I wouldn't be surprised if he could feel my heart beating even more than I can. The stairwell door nearly cracks in two a second after he drags us both through it, and both of us go crashing into a heap on the floor as several of the stairs beneath us disappear into dust.

He's still holding onto me, and it's only his hands that keep me from going tumbling right over the edge of the landing. There's nothing down there anymore, no stairs, just a very long drop, filled with water halfway down, and I could nearly cry looking at it.

"Okay," I choke out. "Okay, okay."

That's apparently the only agreement he needs, as he all but drags me to my feet and starts pulling me up the stairs next to him. It's not just my brain that's shut down, it's everything. My legs don't even feel like they're working right, and if he wasn't pulling me with him I'd be back on the landing right now, just waiting for something to cave my head in.

Other pairs of feet swim into my vision, at long last, and I don't even really have time to process who it is before someone else grabs me too. Four girl? I think so. There's one other person standing on the edge of a balcony, all the glass opened up in front of them. It doesn't make sense even as I watch it happen, even as their feet leave the balcony and they hang in the open air for a too long second before they hit the smooth metal of the hovercraft, and this is so _fucked._

"Go, go," he says, and he can't be saying it to me because his hands are still tight around my arms. The other Four lets go of me and she's off the balcony in two seconds flat. Someone's reaching through the very broken side window of the hovercraft and is hauling the first person I saw jump through, the two of them tumbling into the blackness beyond it. Further than I can see.

It's only five feet away, if that but it seems so much further. Both of his hands tighten around me, one last time, and he looks down at me.

"I'm gonna go first," he says. "Just come after me. You're not going anywhere."

Not running away, not falling to the earth below. Or the water. He's not going to let me go.

Why in the world do I even believe him?

He lets go of me, and jumps. The Four girl gets hauled through the window. I don't know how he's keeping any sort of balance, even half on his hands and knees, but he turns back to me. Waiting.

My toes are off the edge of the balcony. The drop is so far, too far.

If I fall...

I can't fall.

I'm in the air for a second that feels like an entire lifetime. It's worse than anything I've ever experienced, worse than watching Laurel's blood spread all over the glass bridge and worse than watching the arrow fly across the room and waiting for it to hit. It's worse than anything.

My knees slam into the metal edge, and then his hands are back on me.

There's no frantic grabbing, no second for me to slide backwards and almost fall right off the edge. The wind is blowing so strong I can hardly see, reminiscent of that first second after our plates locked into place, but I can feel him pulling me backwards even if I can't see it. A different pair of hands slips under my arm and haul me upwards, and then there's nothing but black around me for a long moment as I go spinning head over heels through the window, landing with a thud on the cool metal ground below me.

He lands half on top of me as whoever pulled me in gets a hold of him too, but I can't even be bothered to care. There's a dead body right next to me, a Peacekeeper, the front of their helmet cracked and splintered open.

Someone's yelling, over and over again.

"What the fuck do we do?" Don't recognize that one either. Probably won't recognize any of them.

"Did anyone not consider the _fucking forcefield?_ "

"There isn't one."

It's one of the calmest voices I've ever heard, nothing like when I heard him in training, like the thud of fists against another person's face. The lights in the hovercraft are all flickering, but not enough that I can't make him out when he appears.

"Blair," the One girl says, voice almost terrifyingly quiet, and it's definitely him. Blood on his hands, his face, but worst of all is the shard of glass buried in his skin, just to the side of where his arm meets his shoulder. It's half the length of my forearm, and that's just what I can see. Judging by the amount of blood that's drenched his entire front, all down his arm, it's a lot bigger than that.

"Blair," she repeats, and that's actual terror in her voice. He looks down, almost distantly, like he hadn't even realized. There's blood all over the glass underneath me, too, like when he smashed right through it happened then and he didn't even feel it. Too much adrenaline, too much to worry about.

"There isn't one," he says again, like that's the only thing he knows how to say. Maybe it is.

The Four guy rips himself away from me and to his feet, swearing frantically under his breath, just as Blair collapses.

* * *

What are y'all going to put on your placement lists now?

I am fully, 100% prepared for the amount of shit I am going to get for this, because I feel like that's half the reason I decided to go through with it if I'm being perfectly honest. The other half being I've had this planned since 2015. And for the sake of your own sanity, please no one ask me how long this story actually is. You really don't want to know.

Explanations (extremely long ones) start next week. If there's one thing this story did - it got out of hand.

And if any of you want to get away from my bullshit, consider checking out and submitting to dyloccupy's syot _Certain Defeat_ , because I would really appreciate it.

Until next time. Or until five minutes from now, when at least one of you leaps down my throat.


	31. Blindness

The Capitol; Presidential Mansion.

* * *

 _Find us a trapdoor, find us a plane.  
Tell the survivors, help is on the way.  
I was a blind fool, never complained.  
All the survivors, singing in the rain._

 _I was the one with the world at my feet.  
Got us a battle, leave it up to me._

 _What it is and where it stops, nobody knows.  
You gave me a life I never chose.  
I wanna leave but the world won't let me go._

 _Wanna leave, but the world won't let me go._

* * *

 **Dominika Gardell, 43 years, President of Panem.**

* * *

She was beginning to regret ever making Renatus her Vice President.

Magnus Norville had lasted six months before he resigned, when she was first made President. Creon Goddard had lasted seven years, before Luca Arker had put a bullet through his back and out the front. Anatola Worthing had died a year and a half ago in her sleep, forty-six years old, and they'd never quite figured out why.

She had thought, with three Vice President's down, that maybe Renatus Quinn would finally be the one that broke the cycle.

With how much he's talking - babbling, really, she's about to take it all back.

If anything, this is a good reason to. She knows what he just watched. She was watching it with him. He saw nine kids board a hovercraft and not reappear, saw the arena come crumbling down around them like this was supposed to happen from the beginning. He watched all of the lights go out in the hallway outside, one by one, until the hallway was filled with nothing but darkness. Until the projection went black.

She's slowly beginning to realize it was, as all of the pieces slowly fit into place.

He's still talking. She's still sitting in a dark room, lit only by the windows, waiting for Cambria to get here and set eyes on her face for the last time.

"She did this," he says, like she doesn't already know. Like she hasn't known since the moment Carnell's feet left that building. "She did all of this, and she's coming here now. You're letting her come here."

"She wanted me to come to her," she says, very calmly. "I'd rather her be here."

What's left for them in the control room, except for blank screens and an explanation that will do nothing, in the long run? Every inch of this city had been hers until Arker had managed to crawl his way out of it completely unscathed, and now that's been taken from her too. She should have expected that, when it was over-run with the last blood ties Ferrox had in the world and the team he had picked himself, years ago.

"How many people do you think knew?" Renatus questions. "Everyone she's close to? Half the city? I know you're thinking exactly what I am, about who's helping her; you brought a boy back to _life_ five years ago to ensure this wouldn't happen!"

"And as we've seen first-hand, I think we were both proven wrong today."

If she was anyone other than who she was she's sure he'd be hitting a lot harder right now. She knew the risks. She's known every single risk, since she started doing this. There was always a chance it wouldn't work.

It was a set of risks she had to take, every single day.

He looks furious, or if she was a betting woman, terrified. For his own life, most likely, because they have protections but even what they have might not be enough, if everything has truly gone south.

"Calm down," she says. "You can leave. Cambria should be here any minute - and make sure Morales comes with her. And ask Cybell to get me a drink, would you?"

"He's in their family too. That's not wise."

"Then let him prove his loyalty as well. If he wants to be a traitor with the rest of them then let it be. I won't have a problem having him executed before he ever gets to marry Vesper."

Almost family or not, her Head of Security or not, if Auriel Morales has betrayed her too when he was supposed to be her last line of defense, then she'll do worse than execute him. Yet another thing to add to the list of things she should have quelled the second they began - watching him get close to them, watching him get close to Vesper. It could all come back for her in the end.

She hears the footsteps coming down the hallway not long after, Renatus having vacated less than five minutes ago. The door opens, the darkness of the hallway doing nothing to the barest amount of light in this room.

Cambria steps in with Auriel at her heels, and he turns to close the door behind them. There's only one chair, at the opposite end of the table and Cambria takes a seat in it without looking at her once. There's no chance to lock the door before Cybell steps inside, a single drink in her hand. She looks nervously between all three of them as she places the drink on the table in front of her.

"Thank you, Cybell. That's all."

She's never seen the girl vanish so quickly, so eagerly.

The lock on the door clicks. Cambria leans back in her chair and laces her hands together, folding them over her stomach. Dominika takes a sip of the drink, and it does nothing to make her feel any better.

Another first for today.

"How does it feel, to be a traitor?"

Cambria shrugs. "Not as bad as I expected, actually."

She could take her head off just for that. One sentence, and that's all. Cambria doesn't look bothered in the slightest, glancing around the room. It looks so different in this light, more dangerous.

"Where are they going?"

Another shrug.

"You have to know. They have trackers."

"Trackers that were never activated. Why do you think we never herded them closer together, made them fight? Because we never knew who was where."

It's enough to confirm that everyone in the control room knew, but she already suspected that from the beginning. That group was as tight knit as anything, closer than any blood-related family.

"No one knows where those kids are going," Cambria continues. "Where they'll end up, your guess is as good as mine. The hovercraft will stop sooner than later - it's not built for the distance they'll want to travel. But who knows how far they'll get before it does, with no forcefield to stop them."

"And how long have you had this little idea?"

"Someone's known every year, Dominika. Since Ferrox died. Every year we told one person, wondering if that was going to be the year when they finally believed us. And every year until now it failed."

"Who?"

"The first was Elyse Bankston, District Ten. The last almost-Career District Ten ever produced. She was pushed to her death on the second day by Aveza Cairnes. During the 157th it was Lyell Kowalski, District Three. He and his two remaining allies made it to the final six when he decided he only wanted the three of them to survive. He killed two of the remaining kids before his allies turned on him, and then Tessa Belmonte killed the two of them."

She knew all of this. She had watched it all, same as the rest of them. And yet hearing it like this was like watching it for the very first time.

"The 158th - Wren Willmore, the District partner of our eventual winner. The shocker death of the year, killed in the bloodbath by the pair from One. She never had a chance to try."

She already knows what words are coming next.

"Emori Arker, District Six," Cambria says. "But it was never about bringing more than her out. Not for us, not for her. Last year was all about proving you could still survive, even wielding that amount of power. She stepped on that stage and you were powerless, for the first time in your life. Because before the Games had started, you already knew who had won."

"And well, you already watched this year," she continues. "I don't think I need to spell that one out for you. I figured it was time to try a Career."

The way she says it, so casually, it burns a hole straight through her. Through the both of them.

Only one of them will last through the fire.

"It's all going to plan, is it?" she asks. "Or at least it was, until I refused to come to you. When I asked you to come here instead the car that was supposed to take me to the control room left as scheduled. It crashed along the Mirstone Bridge fifteen minutes ago. The driver's dead. How long did that take to organize? And how long have you wanted me dead?"

If Cambria's surprised, she doesn't show it. That's what's really infuriating about all of this, how hard it was to crack all of them. Ferrox didn't crack until they found his blood all over the wall of his own house, and where he ended Cambria started. Her eyes never waver. Anybody else would be on their knees by now, begging for mercy, for forgiveness.

Cambria won't beg for something she knows she won't get.

"You're probably wondering how I knew not to get in the car," Dominika says. "How many people knew, about the car?"

"Ten."

That's more than she suspected. More than she would have trusted, in this case. She's one, four other Gamemakers. Five, and she can assume that Vesper and Bellona were informed somewhere along the way. That still leaves three, and there's thousands of people in this city. Three out of thousands, that knew how close she was to her own death.

"Someone within your own is a traitor," she informs her. "Someone gave you up before you ever had the chance to complete anything."

Cambria's already realized that on her own. One of those ten people gave up the information before it ever even began.

"Are you finally satisfied?" she continues. "You tried. You failed. Those kids will be found eventually - we both know they can't hide forever. Every single person who knew about this will die. Every single person in the Training Center, every single one of those kids, except for the one we choose as our victor. Your team, your family. Was it worth it?"

Cambria looks down at the table between them for far too long before she looks up again, meeting Dominika's eyes. That was always the difference, between her and Ferrox. To a degree Ferrox was always scared of her, always knew that whenever he spoke to her he was pushing his luck. Cambria knows it, and she doesn't care.

She takes another sip. Finally, it starts to burn.

"You won't get the chance," Cambria says quietly.

"What?"

"The Training Center's empty. Or at least it will be shortly. My sister left Capitol boundary lines with my children a half hour ago. My team's locked up where you can't get them. I've already got people looking for those kids. And Cybell is already gone."

The burn intensifies, just the slightest bit.

Cambria sits up. Both of their eyes land on the drink just in front of her outstretched hands.

 _Cybell's already gone._

"That was always the issue with you, Dominika," she says. "All these years you prided yourself on being one step ahead. For so many years you called Ferrox foolish for never knowing what was going to happen next. Were you always just projecting?"

Cybell was the eighth. And when she looks towards the door and Auriel doesn't move, she knows who the ninth was.

"Who was the tenth?"

Cambria gets up, and she can't move. The burn is getting worse. It feels like all of her limbs are paralyzed, frozen in place. It takes everything in her to raise her hand to knock the glass off the table. The glass shatters on the ground at her feet, the liquid filled with whatever's killing her soaking into the bottoms of her shoes.

"Who was the tenth?" she repeats, and Cambria stops, halfway to the door. She doesn't turn around.

"It doesn't matter."

It does, for whatever reason. She wants to know. She wants to know who the tenth puzzle piece was, the one that filled it in. The one that finally wound up killing her, from the inside out.

"Was it always for him?" she manages. Auriel opens the door, and even if she could start screaming there's no one around to hear her. No one would think her Head of Security couldn't protect her, no one wanted to be around to witness this. Or maybe, no one else in this building wanted to look her in the eyes and admit they were a traitor, too.

Both of them step out into the hallway, and it's the last thing she's ever going to see. The last two living, breathing humans in the world that she's going to see, and they both killed her.

Cambria doesn't have to answer. She already knows what she'd say.

"Was this all for him?"

The door closes.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

I've never seen one group of people panic so much, so simultaneously.

Rory only just manages to catch Blair. It doesn't make sense, even as I'm watching it. It's like someone cut both of his legs out from under him. One second he's standing and the next he's two seconds from gone.

Dimara's on them by the time I really wrap my brain around the fact that he almost just smashed into the floor. My brain was too busy trying to wrap around the fact that I'm standing in a hovercraft, and there's at least two dead bodies that I can see, and not a single person standing around me right now looks like they know what they're supposed to do.

"Okay, everyone listen to me," Dimara says, a little frantically. "Number one, someone figure out how to _get us the fuck out of here_. Number two, I don't care if you can walk or not, find me every single first aid supply you can in this place, right now."

"We have stuff in our—"

"Gonna need a lot more than that," Dimara interrupts, before whoever says it can even get the entire sentence out. There's so much blood all over him. I can't even see if he's conscious or not, if he's even breathing, but somehow I think the urgency would be even worse if he wasn't. It almost feels like the urgency can't get any worse.

The Nine kid, who still hasn't even managed to pull himself off the floor, goes crawling in the direction of what I'm assuming is the control room. Not two seconds after he disappears through the doorway a body thuds out into the main area. Well, at least we know the pilot's dead.

Nadir grabs my arm and hauls me off.

I don't know what we're looking for. I don't know if this is a hovercraft designed for taking out victors, for taking out bodies, or if they're one and the same.

"I feel like I'm in the fucking twilight zone," Nadir mutters. She lets go of me to reach up on a shelf and grab a first aid kit, three times the size of the ones we had in the arena. She tosses it back at me.

"Go back to them, I'll keep looking."

Apparently even she can tell that I'm two seconds from spinning endlessly in circles, not knowing what the hell to do. The first aid kit is heavy, feels even heavier when I can't remember the last time I had a proper meal.

Somehow they've managed to get Blair on the floor without him passing out, which seems like a small miracle in itself. I'm pretty sure if I was him I'd have passed out five minutes ago, with even less warning. I'm pretty sure Dimara talking to him is the only thing keeping him from going under, but even that doesn't look like it's going too well.

I drop down next to them on the floor and the first aid kit pops open. It's a lot - bandages and gauze, bottles of disinfectant, but it still doesn't even look like enough.

"Should I?"

"Stay here for a minute," Dimara grumbles. "This is not gonna be good. Rory, sit him up. Do not pass out."

They look like they know what they're doing. If it wasn't for the fact that I don't know if she's talking to Blair or Rory about not passing out, at this point, then I'd be completely confident. The two of them looking almost equally petrified is not exactly the most reassuring thing.

When Rory gets both arms under Blair's shoulders and pulls him back upright, I'm certain we've lost him. Dimara grabs him with both hands and all but forces his eyes back open.

"What did I say?"

"Kinda hard," he manages, and I cannot say I blame him. Like I said, I'd be long gone by now.

I already know what she's going to do, but I can't see how. Rory's holding him as steady as he possibly can, but nothing's going to prepare them for her wrapping both hands around that chunk of glass and trying to get it back out of him. The thing is huge, and I'm already surprised it hasn't taken his arm off entirely.

"You're not actually," Blair chokes out, because he's already realized exactly what she's doing, two seconds before she draws her sleeves up over her hands and wraps them both around the chunk of glass.

She looks back at me. "Take all of those bandages out, and just be ready."

Ready for when she pulls it out, so that I can try and stop some of the bloodflow before he loses what little's left in his body. It's giving my hands something to focus on, as I start unwrapping all of the bandages I can. I see Dimara's hands move, just out of the corner of my eye, and am almost shocked by the silence at first, when the glass comes free half an inch.

It doesn't last. I'm pretty sure we all see it coming.

The next tug requires a little bit more force, more pressure against the back of his shoulder, and that's when he starts screaming.

Even muffled into Rory's shoulder the noise still sends a shock through all of us. Somewhere in the middle of his screaming Celia comes back with a first aid kit, similar enough to my own. Dimara's still pulling at that chunk of glass, and it's even more jagged than I expected, as it starts to come free. Rory's hands holding steady to the backs of his shoulders aren't doing anything right now.

"There's medicine in one of the back rooms, but none of it's fucking labeled," Nadir says, poking her head around the corner. "If someone could—"

Celia's back on her feet and headed towards her before any of us can respond. There are more footsteps behind me, odd, little hopping ones, and then the Ten girl shows up behind me, holding an armful of sheets.

"Nothing first aid," she says, a little breathless. "Vance is helping I don't know his name get us out of here - I think they're figuring it out? I hope."

That might actually work better. She hands me the sheets and turns around to head off again, looking like she'd rather anywhere but here.

By the time I look back nearly the entire thing is out. There's already an alarming amount of blood, but I can't help without getting in Dimara's way even more than I already am. Blair's stopped screaming, but now it just sounds like he's struggling for breath, and that's almost worse. I keep waiting for the sound to stop altogether, for it to finally be too much...

The glass comes out.

Someone lets out a sound that's pure relief, and Dimara pulls her hands back, still holding onto it. I have the sheets in one hand and bandages in the other as I lean in to find the worst of it, pressing hard against the torn edges of his skin. He doesn't even move.

There's little rivulets of his blood dripping from Dimara's hands to her elbows, and it's hard not to look at.

"She's right," Celia says, stopping right next to us. "I don't know what any of it is either, and frankly I'm not really willing to experiment and find out."

Nadir's standing over my shoulder, watching. "You can't stitch that back together with a needle and thread."

It's not really something I've wanted to think about, but she's right. I can feel just how large the gap is, between the mangled edge of arm and his shoulder. They can't force it back together, not here. There's nowhere else for us to go, nothing else to do but sit here and hope the bleeding stops eventually.

Even if it does, that doesn't fix anything. If Rory wasn't talking to him now, very quietly, I'd already be convinced there was no point in trying.

"So what do we do now?" Rory asks. I can feel Blair's blood underneath my hands, already starting to soak through.

No one responds.

For the first time, I don't think anyone knows.

* * *

 **Cambria Mervaine, 39 years, Head Gamemaker.**

* * *

She's spent far too much time in cars during situations where she should have been a hundred miles away.

If she could close her eyes, she could imagine it. She'd be anywhere but here, and there'd be nothing to worry about. No back-up plans into the thousands, because they had to be sure.

They had to be sure.

No one tried to stop them, when they left the mansion. She knows there are a handful of people, somewhere in the halls, that won't be sad about it. But for now the door remains locked. And what's on the other side, no one could guess. Not right now.

"No one's found her yet," she guesses.

Auriel shakes his head. "I'll be notified as soon as someone does. They'll go into lockdown - they'll think I'm still there."

Far off in the distance, at the Training Center, she sees a single hovercraft leave the roof. That's one. She knows her sister is long gone by now, far enough away that no one will think to go after her. Cybell, too, is probably already at the edge of the city's limits, where they sent her. They need to finish all of this before someone opens that door. Things get infinitely more complicated once someone does.

He turns the car off down a side-street. The streets were already empty, but now they're positively barren. Everyone's hidden themselves, just in case. It's too dangerous to be outside.

"Should I be prepared to shoot someone?" he asks, hands still on the steering wheel. The thought hasn't left her. She knows Dominika wasn't lying, or else she'd have died twenty minutes sooner, in an accident that nearly tore a car in half. Someone in that warehouse is a traitor. Someone she spent so long carefully locking away so they couldn't be touched, and everything still came spilling out.

"Don't shoot anyone," she says quietly, and gets out of the car.

Vesper's got the door open before either of them even finish crossing the alleyway and is practically smothering her in even less time than that. She doesn't think telling him to stay put will do any good even when he's ninety years old.

"Did you actually do it," he says quietly, and she says nothing.

A lot like Dominika, he already knows the answer.

He lets her go without expecting anything else, but she figures he won't let Auriel go so easily. The doorway is dim, the room inside even darker, and Lex is on her before she even gets inside.

"Are you okay?" she says, frantically, glancing her over like she's not sure. Lex has always been the worried one, though, the one who frets when one of them so much as gets a papercut.

"Yeah," she responds, glancing at the rest of them. Sona doesn't know, not properly, but somehow she does. Cambria doesn't have to say it out-loud to confirm it. Cyrus and Resani are both staring back at her in silence, and something in her changes. She doesn't care what she said a minute ago, because suddenly it doesn't matter. None of it matters, not when something this bad is looking her right in the face.

"You know what," she says. "I changed my mind."

The two of them are still coming through the door behind her. She turns around and grabs the gun out of Auriel's belt before he even properly looks back at her.

The slide clicks when she pulls it back, turns around, and points it directly at Resani's head.

"Um," is all Cyrus gets out, before Lex squeaks and dives behind him. Sona, much to her credit, doesn't move a single inch. Resani doesn't move either, and she knows it must be bad, because in any other situation he'd be running. He's looking her directly in the eye, now.

"Cambria," he starts, but she really doesn't want to hear begging. She doesn't know why every single suspicion landed on him right away, but she already knows she's not wrong.

She's never wrong.

"Start talking," she says.

She can't really see Vesper freaking out behind her, but she can imagine it, and she's only thankful that Auriel's holding him back from throwing himself in the middle right now like he does all the time.

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"How long ago did you tell her?"

Resani chances a glance at the others, like one of them will intervene. Like one of them will stop it. But the realization is beginning to dawn, now, the confidence that she's not just pointing a gun at him because she's bored. Lex and Cyrus are staring between the two of them in disbelief, and Sona looks like she'd be tempted to pick up the gun herself, finish where Cambria leaves off.

"How long ago?" she repeats.

"Six months," he breathes. She can see the way his feet are itching to take off. He doesn't know how far he'll be able to make it, before she pulls the trigger.

"You have to see it from my side, though," he says quietly. "I never thought this was going to work - none of us ever knew if this was going to work! We were trying for so many years, I thought it was only a matter of time until you fucked up and got us all killed for it. I didn't want to die for this. I never wanted to. You never gave me a choice."

"Dominika's dead," she informs him. "Who's going to protect you now?"

His eyes widen, and she hates the satisfaction she feels right now.

"I told her that ten people knew about that car. That wasn't a lie. But only five knew about the second plan."

She never wanted to believe it could happen, but reducing that number was the best thing she ever did. She'd be dead right now, probably, if she hadn't, and all of them with her. All of them except Resani, who never cared which of them lived and died as long as he was still alive at the end of the day.

She wonders if this was how Ferrox felt, staring down the barrel of a gun and wondering which second was going to be his last.

"There's no one left to protect you," she reminds him. "And if I ever fucking see your face again, you'll last five seconds."

He takes off. It's so fast it nearly startles her.

The second the words leave her mouth he takes off around her and out the door. She almost expects him to go for the car but he sprints right past it, right down to the end of the alley, and then disappears around the corner. She doesn't know where he'll go now, if there's any place left for him. She thought this was it. That's the only thing that stopped her, in the end.

Putting a bullet in his head won't get them through the rest of the day.

Auriel pries the gun out of her hand when she finds she doesn't really know how to let it go. Lex is crying, now, staring at the vacant doorway like he's going to come back any second now, say it was all fake. They all look like a piece just got chipped out of them, and it's true. For so many years it's been all of them, never just a few. Always a group that moved together, breathed together.

She can't help but speculate how much of that was ever real to him.

"Let's go," she says flatly.

They've got places to be, and the Capitol isn't one of them.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

At this point I'm convinced of two things.

This cannot possibly get any worse. And no one can make a stupider decision than what's already been made.

I think I'm about to test the waters on that latter thing, though.

It's half because I have no idea where Rory wandered off to, after he finally handed Blair back off to Dimara, and half because I understand exactly why he left. I can't stand the way Blair's looking at me right now, like he doesn't even see me. He's staring right through me, because he went out of focus a long time ago. Frankly, I think someone ought to give him an award for still being conscious, though I think that's more Dimara's doing than his.

"Won't be gone long," I tell her. Blair doesn't move. "Just yell if you need anything."

She doesn't ask why, but she probably knows anyway. I squeeze her shoulder when I stand up and she manages a smile, which is at least good. It'll be gone before I'm two steps away.

I don't know where anyone else has went either. The hovercraft is dark and cold, and I know at least one person is still steering this thing, but besides that it seems like everyone else has done their best to disappear.

There's another body on a set of metal stairs at the far end. So that's four, at least. Four people that Blair killed while rapidly approaching death himself.

Besides those two things I mentioned, nothing else makes sense. I almost don't want anything else to make sense, because I fear that the second we start getting answers is the second the real panic begins. We got close, the past little while, but I know it can still get worse.

Rory's sitting in the corner of an over-sized storage room, head buried in his knees, and doesn't look up even though I know he can hear my footsteps.

"You know, finding you sitting in a room with a body just outside wasn't exactly something I'd have put money on."

That doesn't earn me a smile, but he at least looks at me, propping his chin up on his knees. The lack of expression on his face is enough to hurt, once again, but it's not the same way he looked when he killed the Five kid. This is something I haven't experienced yet. I cross the room and crouch down in front of him, putting my hands on his knees when the entire hovercraft rocks.

Because that's totally the only reason, as everyone's so helpfully begun to point out.

"Do you guys need help?" he asks. Of course that's why he thinks I'm here right now - why would it be for any other reason?

"Nope. Just thought I would check on you."

The corners of his lips twinge, but that's about all I get. I really didn't think the concept of me checking on someone, let alone him, was so odd until right now. Apparently it is.

"I don't know," he sighs. "I wish I could just go to sleep, or something, and wake up and have all of this not be real. Or just be dead, you know. That's an option too. Probably the easier one at this rate."

He was so convinced he was going to die. We both know that. It took me too long to realize that he had no intention of ever getting out of there alive. Then again, I also thought he would let me die, if it came down to it, and he proved me wrong there too.

"You can go home now."

"You don't know that. You don't know where we'll end up."

"We'll walk."

"Aren't we like, on the opposite side of the country from Four?" he points out. "Do you not think someone will look for us between here and there?"

"We'll walk _fast_."

That, finally, earns a smile that he nearly buries back between his knees, and he puts one of his hands over mine where it's resting on his knee. If it was anyone else talking like this, I'd probably tell them to just get it over with and accept the fact that we'll probably be dead at the end of this anyway. That's what I would say normally, and to be honest, that's kind of what I still think. But I'm not about to tell him that, not about to crush one of the only things he might have left.

For all we know, the second we step outside of this thing, that's the end.

And if it is...

"Man, am I probably gonna regret this," I groan, and he looks back up at me. Watching.

"What?"

That's about all he gets out, before I lean forward and kiss him.

He freezes instantly, because I think he expected it about as much as I expected to actually have the nerve to do it. In the second that he's completely frozen, I'm more than prepared to pull back and then run as fast as I can in the opposite direction until I crash headlong into a wall. And I'm about to, I really am, until his fingers move and then slip through mine, still over top of his knee, and then he pulls me a fraction of an inch closer.

Our knees are still in the way, and his hand is shaking in mine, and I can't tell if that was already happening or if that just started up.

I don't run, but it still feels a lot like crashing into something, anyway.

Pulling away is like getting dumped headfirst back into reality, too harsh, too sudden. He doesn't let go of my hand, and even though he doesn't open his eyes his other hand slips around to the back of my neck. Not letting me get too far.

"How's that for being stupid?" I ask, and the way my voice wavers is covered up in his laugh. It's a sound I think I could spend a hundred years listening to and not get tired of hearing.

"Blair still wins, I think."

"Shit. I'll have to try harder."

His laugh dies off, a little bit quicker than I think it would normally, but he at least still looks amused. Or maybe that's just the flush high up on his cheeks. And to think I made fun of him for that, way back when. It wasn't even that long ago.

It wasn't even that long ago, and everything since then has changed.

* * *

 **Seren Dobrana, 23 years, Victor of the 155th Hunger Games.**

* * *

She's always thought the Tribute Center was too damn big.

There's no reason for it. There really isn't. Even when she was here the first time she didn't get the chance to look in every little nook and cranny, and she's been a little bit too preoccupied this time around to actually go through with her search.

It's all the bottom floors she's worried about. She already heard the noise of one hovercraft disappearing, taking most of the victors with it. But she's not willing to leave yet.

Emori's got most of the upper floors, and it's the only thing that's keeping her from outright sprinting around, making sure that no one's still there.

And the worst part is, she knows Cicely wasn't with that first group.

There's not a single part of her that wants to go looking. If Cicely wants to survive then she probably will, plain and simple. Seren shouldn't go interfering with that, not when she knows Cicely would sooner stab her in the eye than listen to anything she has to say. There's a reason Cicely didn't know about this, was never on the list of people they considered telling.

She finds herself opening the door for the second floor anyway, and the apartment stretches before her, dark and empty.

She doesn't even have a weapon, and that's the part she hates the most. If she had just gone to the roof someone would have given her one, and then she could've come back down, if the time allowed for it. But she couldn't just run upwards while the thought was still in her back of her mind, that someone might still be down here.

It takes her a moment, engulfed in the darkness, to realize that Cicely's already there.

It's more a shadow than her, sitting way too calmly on the other side of the dining table. It looks like she's been there a while. Maybe she has. Seren was up on the sixth floor, waiting for it to happen. Not paying Cicely any sort of mind, because she didn't think she had to.

"What are you still doing here?"

Cicely shrugs. "What else am I supposed to do? Leave with everyone else?"

Well, that's definitely more the road Seren was leaning towards, but Cicely's always been difficult. It's not like she's going to start cooperating _now_.

"You should. If not—"

"If not, _what_?" she says, and stands up from the table. "Then I'll stay here. What do you think will happen to me if I stay here?"

Seren doesn't know. That's the worst part. She doesn't know what chance a victor would have on their own in this place, even if that victor just so happens to be Cicely Arlington. She also doesn't know what will be left here, after today. If anything at all.

She watches Cicely walk around the edge of the table, and her heart drops into her stomach.

She killed eight people, eleven years ago, and she did it without a shed of remorse. Seren didn't come close to matching her, but Cicely doesn't know what's happened in the past five years. She doesn't know that Seren's number far surpasses hers now. The worst part is, even if she said it out-loud, Cicely wouldn't be scared. Right now she's stalking towards her, holding a butter knife that looks like a machete in her hands, and it's honest to god terrifying. Suddenly she knows exactly why so many people ran away from her in the 149th.

"How fast do you think all of this falls apart," Cicely says slowly. "If I kill you?"

"Not fast enough," she replies. Everything's already in motion.

And so is Cicely's arm, with the knife. A butter knife isn't going to kill her.

It still comes a lot closer than she expected.

She dives out of the way and the knife hits the wall behind her instead. There's nothing in here, not unless she plans on smothering her to death on the floor with a pillow. Which, somehow, doesn't seem like the worst way this could end. Not even close.

Seren doesn't really have many options. Cicely will kill her and not think twice about it. She backs up to the table. No other knives. Still nothing.

It's not going to be pretty. It's going to hurt.

Everything hurts, as she's come to discover.

Cicely yanks the knife out of the wall, and turns around. She still looks completely unbothered, like this is her morning routine. It probably is, knowing her. Kill one person before breakfast kinda thing.

"Are you happy?" she asks. "The myth, the legend - _the girl who returned from the dead -_ are you happy with all of that?"

"Not gonna lie," Seren says, trying to keep her voice steady. "I'm not mad about it."

That's all she needed to say. Whenever Cicely doesn't get the answer she wants, she gets angry. And when she gets angry—

Cicely crashes into her with all the force of a speeding truck, her back hits the edge of the table, and the entire thing cracks under their combined weight. She was right, it does hurt. They both hit the ground with a thud and she feels half of the glass cut into her back instantly, but Cicely's in a similar state. She yells, all frustration. The butter knife grazes off of her arm, not sharp enough to do any real damage.

She's not deterred. Cicely's fist grazes her cheekbone and then slams directly into the center of her face. She can taste the copper tang of blood in the back of her throat, but that's not really the concern. She's been punched before. She's been punched way too often, if you ask her.

They both get a hold of the glass at the same time, and she tries to kick herself away.

Cicely's not having any of it. A hand locks around her ankle, fingernails harsh pinpricks digging into her skin. The glass in her hand slices open the skin around her knee.

Pain's not really pain unless you let it be. That's what so many people have spent the past few years telling her.

She gets a single kick in, right against the edge of Cicely's neck, and she falls away gasping.

Cicely's only half-human, she decides. Half something else nobody else knows about. She gasps for all of two seconds, pulling air back into her lungs, before she's back on her. Another fist slamming into her face, and then again. Her nose starts bleeding, dripping blood down into her mouth, and she feels like she could choke on it. There's already enough blood dripping down her face.

She gets purchase. Just a second of it. One of her own glass pieces digs into Cicely's side, and she feels blood spurt underneath her fingers.

She just needs one second.

Something clangs, too far off for her to think about what it is, but Cicely looks up. For one second.

She throws her knees upwards and into Cicely's stomach and she rears back. Already, she's coming back down, probably ready to punch her until she's unconscious, or rip her throat open with her bare hands.

There's a shard of glass waiting for her, when she comes back down.

She doesn't so much see it bury in her neck as she feels it, blood gushing out hot all over her hand and splashing down onto her neck and her chest. Cicely's choking, above her, trying to breath through the hole in her neck, but it's not working.

She shoves her away and drags herself a foot in the opposite direction, just in case. She doesn't think Cicely has it in her to come back and kill her, not when she's dying, but she wouldn't put it past her. God, does her back hurt. She makes it to the nearest wall and then nearly smacks her head off it. Her head's spinning, and it looks further away then it is.

Her fingers find purchase against the wall, even slippery as they are. Her head spins even worse when she makes it to her feet, but at least she's standing.

Or at least she was. She takes two, three unsteady steps out from the wall and nearly falls over.

Arms catch her before she makes it back to the ground.

Enough of her is still intact that she at least recognizes that she _should_ be panicking, but can't bring herself to follow through with it.

"I thought I told you not to get irritated and kill anyone."

"Oh, god," she chokes out. "You couldn't have shown up two minutes sooner?"

Luca looks down at her and actually has the nerve to smile, but his hand finds her cheek, thumb brushing against the line of her jaw. She can still hear Cicely choking on her own blood, because of course she won't just die. Of course she won't.

"Sorry. Took me six months to get here. Also, you look like shit."

"Thank you," she manages. "That's really touching. I missed you too."

She lets her head thunk into his chest, because now that he's here she figures she doesn't really need to do anything. Six months was too long, and frankly she's never doing it again. Never leaving him on the other side of a fence and walking away again. His lips brush against the top of her head briefly before he all but carries her back out into the hallway, because her feet hardly touch the ground the entire time. He leaves her against the wall and goes back in.

The gunshot shatters the quiet of the hallway she's been left in and two seconds later he's back in front of her, both hands cupping her jaw, looking down at her in concern. Like he didn't just finish someone off.

"I'm good," she says. "We should probably go."

That's probably why he's here in the first place. She took too long to show up. Of course he would have realized that. That second hovercraft wasn't leaving the roof until she was on it, and that was probably the first thing he told everyone when he left to come find her.

He pulls a sleeve over his hand and wipes some of the blood off of her face. She looks up at him.

"I am not kissing you," she informs him. "I'm disgusting."

He makes a face, and then leans down to kiss her anyway. Typical.

And _she's_ the one that doesn't listen.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

"Not gonna lie," Blair says quietly. "Probably gonna pass out soon."

If we're on the honest track right now, then I was pretty convinced he had already passed out. With none of us manhandling him around and the blood mostly stopped for the time being, I didn't know how much longer we could even keep him awake.

To think I was irritated with him for falling asleep on my leg so many days ago, and now I'd feel too bad to even consider moving him.

I just have to keep telling myself that I'm calm, that as long as I keep my head on my shoulders we'll be fine. It's certainly not the strongest thought I'm having about our fate, but it's the one I need to focus on. It doesn't help that Blair's too out of it to really even explain. We have no idea what's going on outside this hovercraft, no idea what's on the other side of the door, when it opens eventually.

We have no idea.

"Where are we?" Blair asks, muffled into the side of my leg. Again, I was pretty certain he was going under. He definitely sounds like he's close to it.

"No idea."

Celia's still gone, and everyone else too. He shifts, just enough to look up at me.

"I'm not gonna die if you leave me alone for five minutes," he says. Definitely almost gone. "Go find out where we are."

"You sure?"

"Guess you'll find out."

"Not funny," I grumble, but lift his head off my leg and very carefully lower it to the floor anyway. I'm pretty sure the floor is significantly less comfortable, but if he cares, he doesn't say anything. Probably doesn't have the energy to.

The control room is nearly as dark as the rest of the hovercraft itself, lit only by the panels on every single wall. The window outside is nearly as dark; it's impossible to tell how many hours have passed, or where we are. Not just by looking. The Nine boy only half looks like he knows what he's doing, and I'd reckon the half is only there because he's spent so long in here figuring it out.

"Do you know where we are?" I ask, and he jumps nearly a mile in the chair. "Rooke, right?"

He stares at me for a very long and awkward second, eyes like saucers, and then nods.

"What was that in response to?"

"Oh. Uh. I don't know where we are. I've been trying to figure out how to read all of this radar stuff, but I don't really know. Vance was trying to help me, his dad does some mechanic stuff, but it's a little—"

"Complicated?" I guess, and he nods again. He's having difficulty focusing on everything in front of him now that I'm standing there, his eyes constantly flickering down to the scythe that's laying between his feet like he's going to have to use it. I don't think he really believes it, that he's here and that I'm talking to him instead of trying to kill him. Even I don't really believe it.

Eventually he swivels back in the chair a bit and his eyes go back down to all of the buttons in front of him, appraising.

"When did you last eat?" I ask him and he goes still in the chair, staring down at the keys in front of him, confused.

He was the only one that didn't have a backpack, when they finally dragged him on. He was the only one that was alone too. He had to have found at least some water, or he'd be dead by now, but there's no telling about food. His cheeks are gaunt, his eyes sunken back into his skull.

And judging by the silence, I don't even think he knows.

I go back out into the main area and grab a water bottle out of our backpack. Blair doesn't move when I get close, doesn't even open his eyes, but he's still breathing. It's only half full, not exactly like we had time to think about refilling them, but Rooke still jumps again when I put it on the control panel in front of him.

"What is that?"

"What do you think it is?" I ask him. "Just drink it. I'll see if I can find some food."

That's definitely disbelief rapidly filling up his eyes, which makes him look a bit more human again. I can put enough of the pieces together myself. Rory went after him, and Rory knew it was him. Maybe Rooke wasn't alone the whole time, in fact I'd wager against it, but somewhere along the way he ended up on his own, and I know exactly why.

Looking around, there's even more things I don't know. He's still eyeing me warily, and I know the feeling. Still trying to figure out how much of this, exactly, is a dream. Or maybe that's the starvation doing it to him.

"I'll be back," I tell him. I don't know if it'll be enough to stop him from jumping for a third time at the sight of me, but it's all I've got at this point.

His eyes don't once land on the scythe when I'm leaving. I'll consider that a success.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

"Ignoring it's not going to fix it," I inform Vance.

Ignoring it's not going to fix it, but neither is me trying to take the scissors out on my own and hoping for the best. It's bad enough that Vance has pretty much settled in the mindset that if he ignores it, it'll fix itself eventually.

It won't.

I don't know if he's trying not to think about it because of how bad it hurts, or because he doesn't want to go back to the exact moment it happened. I haven't even allowed myself to think of it, because I helped kill Farren too. It took me nine days, and even that length of time didn't prepare me for it. I don't think Vance would have been ready to do it if you gave him a hundred years to prepare himself.

I need help. Besides, I can hear the two of them talking in the next room over anyway.

"Stay here," I tell him, though I don't think he's going anywhere fast as is.

They no doubt hear me coming, because without Vance carrying me around I've resorted to hopping around on one foot. By the time I make it to the next doorway Nadir and Tanis have both frozen mid-conversation and are staring at me expectantly. It's not as awkward as I feel like it should be, but that's because we've all got more pressing matters at hand.

"Can you guys help me with something?" I ask. They both stare. "Please?"

Nadir hauls herself to her feet and then pulls Tanis up with her, starting for the door without a word. I start hopping back down the hall, where Vance has at least listened and stayed still. I think he knows exactly what I'm thinking with this, and his frown only intensifies when he catches sight of the two of them.

Nadir stops when she notices, and Tanis bumps into her back. Both of their eyes narrow when they look down, eyes falling on the very obvious problem. It only seemed so minor before because there was so much chaos.

"I don't even wanna know," Nadir says.

"I do," Tanis replies. "How in the _world_?"

"Really doesn't matter," Vance grits out. Every time he even moves I can tell it hurts. The throbbing pain in my ankle has foot has receded over the past few days, even if I know it's still bad. This is too fresh to do anything other than hurt.

"I have the bandages," I tell them. "I just—"

"Need some help. And for him to hate me for it and not you," Nadir says. "Yep. Got it."

I don't think it's that deep anyway, even if there's blood stained all over the front of his pants, but he looks like he'd rather kick Nadir head-on than let her wrap her hands around the scissors. When she does he takes a deep breath and I reach forward to grab his hand. Even I'd prefer to ignore it, deep down, but I know that we can't. Like I said, bigger problems. Still way more to deal with.

"Alright," she says. "One, two—"

She rips them out.

"That wasn't three," Vance chokes out, and I let go of his hand to reach for the bandages. Nadir hands the scissors back to Tanis, who makes a face as she turns them this way and that, examining them.

I finish off the first roll and someone hands me a second before I can even turn back. It's almost a relief, seeing this amount of blood in comparison to the amount we saw a few hours ago. It's still not great, but it also doesn't make me want to lose every single bit of food I've eaten in the past week either.

Nadir leans forward to tie off one end of the bandages while I start unraveling the second.

And that's when the sirens start going off.

All four of us jump, nearly simultaneously. There's one at the end of the hall, a red revolving light hanging from the ceiling, and it's flashing now, the noise blaring and echoing through the whole hovercraft.

"That's not good," Tanis says flatly. Nadir shoves her lightly in the shoulder, which is apparently code for _go see what's going on,_ because she gets back up to her feet and goes running down the hallway without another word. I think that can also go for us. Nadir leaves me to crumple all the bandages back up into my hands and pulls Vance to his feet on her own. It's almost kind of a relief, to not have to worry about it for once.

Tanis was right. This can't be good. Nadir sets to dragging him back to the main area while I hop awkwardly after them, trying not to worry about too much.

It's in less chaos than it was originally, but I don't know how much that's really saying, considering how bad it first was when we got on. The Fours both get there at the same time that we do, but all Blair does is smash his face into the floor and put a hand over his ear. I can't help but notice he doesn't even try to move the other arm.

"What's going on?" Nadir asks, because I just watched Tanis vanish into the control room after Dimara. In less than two seconds Dimara is back out, looking a little worried.

"Get ready to land."

"Get ready to what?" Vance asks, even though everyone knows he heard her. The siren is blaring so strongly it's a surprise.

"Fuel's almost out. Either we land now or we risk crashing."

"Do you even know where we are?" Rory wonders. I'm gonna go with the answer as no, there, because Dimara picks her spear back up off the ground without answering. We could be landing in one of the Districts, for all we really know. I don't think so, but there's always that chance. There could be people waiting for us on the other side too, people who are going to probably pick and choose which one of us lives. They still need a victor.

Rooke pops his head out of the control room, eyes wide. "Okay, I figured it out."

As if on cue, the hovercraft stops.

You could hardly even feel it moving as is, but we all feel it stop, so abruptly that I stumble. Rory catches the edge of my arm before I can flail any further across the floor, and holds me still. My stomach drops the slightest bit, just enough to confirm that we're headed down. It could be towards anything.

"Should we hide?"

"Fuck that," Celia says. "If we _are_ landing somewhere terrible I'm taking whoever's outside with me."

Judging by how Dimara's holding onto her spear, I'm thinking they're in the same mindset. I wouldn't put it past most of the people in here to be thinking the same way. Even I don't want to die hiding, crying and begging for my life. If it's going to come to that.

There's a lot of confusion, when everyone starts moving. Dimara picks Blair up off the floor and Nadir drags Vance off to the far side of the back cargo door. It'll be big enough to drive a truck through, once it opens entirely. We could probably be obliterated in seconds, if someone wants us gone that badly. Blair might have been the one to jump, but none of us were willing to stay.

I end up on the opposite side of the door with Rory's hand on my arm. No one's said a word since we all started gathering, pressed up against the wall. This feels an awful lot like hiding, if you ask me.

The entire hovercraft shakes when it hits the ground, a little rougher than I think it normally would. I hear the hiss of the back cargo door as it cracks open and then starts lowering.

My entire chest hurts, I'm holding my breath so hard. I killed someone earlier today and even then it didn't hurt this bad.

When the door finally hits the ground, I can hear every single little thing. The breathing of everyone around me, the complete lack of noise from outside. Someone's foot slides along the metal grating underneath us, and the noise sends a shiver down my spine.

"Someone gonna go out there?" Rooke asks, right behind me. The hair on the back of my neck stands up.

"Why don't we let _team arrow_ go out there first," Nadir says, loud enough that if anyone really is outside they all know we're just standing here talking anyway. Clearly, she's talking about Celia and Rory. Celia's already got the crossbow half pointed out the back doorway and swings out into the open at Nadir's words, the bolt gleaming silver in the moonlight.

Nothing happens. I almost expect her to get shot down instantly, but Rory lets go of my arm and goes after her, creeping carefully down the metal incline.

"Are we good?" Dimara asks quietly, a few seconds later.

"We're in the middle of the damn woods," Celia says, sounding half disappointed and half relieved. It's such an anti-climactic ending that something loosens in my chest. The air is starting to flood in now, cool and fresh compared to the metallic tang of the hovercraft.

Blair leans out of Dimara's arms, even through the little leeway she's giving him, and makes a face when he catches sight of whatever's outside. I'm still far enough from the door that I can't properly see, but somehow I don't think I'd get the same feeling as him. Right now he's in the process of understanding something that even Celia and Rory didn't.

"Those are Two's mountains," he says, very quietly, and I peek around the edge. There _are_ mountains, so far off in the distance they're all but pinpricks against the sky, but they're there nonetheless.

It's an answer. A very, very important answer, that we were all hoping we'd soon have an answer to. We know where we are.

But it reignites something else, something much more worrying.

We know where we are, but where do we go from here?

* * *

Reigniting the age old, on-going question with me, of: what the fresh hell am I even doing?

This is the extent of the answers you're going to get, for now. They all will come, eventually, in very different forms. I figured I should probably cut this one off before the length escalated any further (11k chapter, what up). After this one the chapter lengths go back to a much more reasonable and manageable length. For a while, anyway. I'm pretty sure reasonable is only a word in my vocabulary about half the time anyway. Apologies for the constant switch between first and third as well - kinda unavoidable, considering how I've done it in the past. Again, more normal from here on out, I swear.

Love you guys!

Until next time.


	32. And What Happens Next

Outskirts of District Two.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

I thought injuries were supposed to get better, not worse.

Spending hours upon hours thinking about it probably isn't helping much either. It burns and aches constantly, and I don't reckon sleeping on the ground is going to reverse that any time soon. It's hard enough to get comfortable without being forced to sleep outside, where I can pretty much only lay one way or else it feels like my arm is going to detach from my shoulder.

I've never had to deal with pain this bad before. Even in training most injuries would go away after a few days, and if they didn't someone might step out of line to try and get you something for it.

There's no one here to do that, nothing to help me. Yeah, it's my own damn fault, but it'd still be nice.

I can't bring myself to regret it, either. Didn't really expect all these extra people, because I know exactly which people I did this for and it wasn't all of them, but we're here now. I can hardly string together any of what happened, between the moment my feet left the balcony from Rory grabbing me. Just moving as fast as I could and how that one guy on the stairs had almost looked like he expected this to happen eventually, before my mace was in the middle of his chest.

The realization that Seren wasn't lying is still hitting me over and over again, coming back just when I thought I was over it. I spent so much time agonizing over it, wondering if she was just full of shit, if all those years out in the wild messed something up in her head. It certainly sounded that way, when she first told me. It didn't help that I only had a few pieces, that she couldn't risk any more coming out. That was for my sake, I realize now. The more I had known the more danger was in myself. If I was in danger I couldn't get anything done.

It took me nine days to get it together long enough to realize the one thing she had told me, above all others; that if I was still standing there on day nine and didn't make a decision I'd wind up dead anyway.

I guess that's the cost of rebellion - it's all or nothing.

I'm not surprised she wanted me to pick all, even if nine of us isn't exactly the number I'm sure most people were hoping for.

Someone shifts behind me and I roll my head around, looking at everyone. I have no idea how everyone's managing sleep right now. That, or they're all faking it really well, probably so they don't have to deal with me. Not one of them looks comfortable, but I also know that's due to a stray twig or rock poking into their side, not their arm that's only half attached.

It's cold out here. It's always been cold at night, no matter where you are in Two. Even way past the fence it's not surprising that it's no different.

I'm already in enough pain. I don't want to be cold too.

It takes me too long to sit up, with half the leverage that I usually do. It hurts the entire time, burns all the way through the base of my neck and then down to my chest, spreading rapidly through my arm. It feels like everything's moving slower than usual, which doesn't help in the slightest when I finally make it to my feet. The trees are all doubling, and I can feel myself swaying, but there's nothing to grab. Dimara isn't going to be amused if I fall on her while she's sleeping.

Walking doesn't feel like a good idea while I'm this unsteady, but it's either that or stand there for all of eternity until I can finally see straight. Without anything to help, even if it is just some painkillers, I don't see this getting any better. I can tell it's not.

In fact, I think it's getting worse.

The back ramp of the hovercraft looks like an actual mountain, but at least I can grab onto the wall when I make my way up the first few feet, which seems to help immensely. Maybe I should've woken someone up for this.

I already got them into all of this shit, though. They probably need to sleep, after all of yesterday.

The inside of the hovercraft isn't much better temperature wise, but at least there's no bitter wind blowing in off the mountains. All I've got are the sheets they were mostly using to stop my own blood from coming out, and they're not working too well as blankets, as I've come to discover.

The nearest corner looks good anyway, and I really don't think I'm making it any further on my own two feet.

I half fall onto the floor, because my head spins the second I look down and try to lower myself. At least my legs take the brunt of it this time.

Definitely shouldn't be walking on my own. Got it.

Someone's probably going to wake up, find me gone, and then come in here and yell at me, but that's fine. They can have at it with the weird camping bullshit - I don't want a single part of it. I did what I was supposed to. No one told me what to do after the fact.

The floor is ice cold, but it's still better than outside. I draw the sheets up as far as I can, until my arm starts to protest. It feels like the pain is never going to be away, like I'm going to be sick with it. It's hard to even remember what it felt like before now. What it felt like to have everything intact.

The worst part really is not knowing what to do now. Even with the nine of us, we're alone. We don't know if anyone's coming for us, if anyone even knows where we are.

I don't know if there's an end to this. And I almost want there to be.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

I watch Blair wobble off, and already feel bad for not trying to help.

Not that I'd really do any good. I'm limping badly enough on my own. The pain has subsided a bit now that everything's held neatly together, but not enough that I can trust it with holding all of my weight.

I lay awake, listening for the inevitable thud of him falling over and hitting the ground. I'm already prepared to wake someone up to go get him and make sure he hasn't ripped himself open again. I didn't see the worst of it yesterday, not hurt as I was, but the look on Kelsea's face when I asked her afterwards was enough. I didn't have to see.

I'm laying like that for ten, fifteen minutes before I realize he must've made it wherever he was going semi-safely. That, or he made it so far in I just didn't hear him fall over.

There was agony all over his face when he got up, but I can at least keep it together enough to haul myself to my feet. Whatever he's dealing with, it's a lot worse than what I've got going on. Kelsea's going to complain too when she wakes up and realizes I'm gone, because I'm pretty sure she's continued her arena trend and is still attempting to leech the warmth out of me.

There's no sign of him just inside the door, so I keep walking. Either he's asleep or going to hear me coming, because I'm still trying to figure out what hurts less, with every step I take.

Figures I nearly step on him.

I didn't expect him to just have dropped off in whatever corner he best saw fit, but that's exactly what he's done. He cracks open his eyes as I stop, glaring first at me and then at the bandage around my leg, like it's done something to offend him. I wouldn't be surprised.

"I'm asleep," he says, and then pulls the sheet up over his eyes like he's trying to prove a point. He grimaces even with that movement, small as it is. God, even laying down? When I lay down things get ten times better, and Blair mostly just looks like he wants to die.

"You sure?"

"Sure am," he says, more muffled this time. "Leave me alone."

That's pretty much how I expected the conversation to go, but I can't help but wonder. Nadir and Celia went through the majority of all the medicine yesterday, or so I heard. I was too busy trying not to let the scissors get any further in while simultaneously trying to ignore them. It hadn't gone too well.

Did they go through it all, though?

"I'll be right back," I inform him, and he makes a noise. One that doesn't sound too pleased.

I make my way to the medical ward, fumbling around in the dark for the door. Even frantic as they were, I don't see how the two of them could have missed anything. It still could be worth a shot, though. Besides, it's not just him that's injured. I think he realized that, when I stumbled on him. He may be the most injured one here, but he's not the only one.

The room's devoid of any beds, but there's shelves of bottles and syringes, all sorts of things that nearly look the same. Some of them are vaguely different colors, organized mostly according to size, but most of them with no labels. Just like they said.

They couldn't make this easy, could they?

There's whole walls of shelves, but they start to look more the same the further down I wander. I head back for the beginning to start.

I might've been lying to Blair, when I said I'd be right back. This could take a while.

I can see exactly what Nadir and Celia went through, with what's been knocked over and not at all placed back carefully like I'm sure someone else would've. There's not much that's been left untouched, save for few of the bottles lower down on the shelves. Medicine, or injections. I reach down for one of the larger bottles, turning it over. It's one of the few with a label on the bottom.

Does that say what I think it says?

I grab the bottle and a syringe, just in case, and head back for Blair. He doesn't move when I stop next to his head, but blinks and looks up when I shove the bottle in his face, an inch away from his nose.

"What does this say?"

"Do they not teach you how to read in Eight?" he grumbles, but turns the bottle around so he can see it better. "Bone serum. Why?"

I'm actually not seeing things. I was so convinced I was.

"Do you know what it does?"

He shrugs, or at least comes close to it before he cuts himself off, grimacing. "My friend broke three ribs a few months ago and they injected him full of that stuff and in a few days he was brand new. Don't ask me the science behind it. That's Capitol-level shit. We shouldn't have even had it."

This is something they would've overlooked through the first search, because they were so worried about Blair. He hasn't broken anything.

But someone else has.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

I wake up to Vance sticking a needle in Kelsea's leg.

It takes me a very long moment to even realize it's happening, hard as it is to turn over. Celia's got one of my arms trapped and Dimara's braced her backpack against one of my legs to use it as a pillow. Both of them are out cold.

I can hear people moving behind me, and that's the only reason I look over in the first place. Nadir is watching the two of them with one eye open and Tanis is laying flat on her stomach, chin propped up on her forearms, looking on with narrowed eyes.

"What the hell are you doing?" I ask, and Vance doesn't move until I see all of the liquid drain out. That needle is twice the size of any one I've ever had stuck in me, but all Kelsea does is dig her hands into the ground the whole time he does it, not complaining.

"Fixing it. I think."

"You should work on saying that in a more reassuring tone," Nadir points out, and I can't help but agree. What has been going on, since I've been asleep?

Celia pops her head off of my arm for all of two seconds before she evidently decides she doesn't care what everyone's gone up to, and goes back to sleep, still half-pinning my arm underneath her. Dimara and Rooke are the only ones still asleep, but they were the two that sat up the longest last night, for one reason or another. Dimara was probably watching Blair, and Rooke was probably looking around like one of us was two seconds away from snatching the food we had found right out of his hands.

Speaking of Blair.

"Where is he?" I ask, and don't need to use a name for everyone to get it.

Vance jerks a thumb back towards the hovercraft. "Inside. He's fine."

"How did he get back inside?"

"I'm gonna wager a guess and say he walked," Nadir says, and I sigh. He really shouldn't be walking anywhere; I'm sure Dimara even told him that. But leave it to Blair to do something he shouldn't be doing. That's pretty much his thing, at this point.

I have no idea what Vance just shoved inside Kelsea's leg, but she's inspecting her ankle with a mild amount of curiosity. Whatever it was, I don't think it's going to work quite that fast. Nobody else knows either, or at least doesn't care. Nadir dumps out the contents of her bag in front of her. It's not much. There wasn't as much food as we thought there would be in the hovercraft. Hardly anything at all. We'll last a day or two. Three, if we're careful with it.

"I'm rationing all this out," she says, noting my eyes on her. "I am not starving to death in the woods after all of this fuckery. There's no way."

She's got a point. Rooke's not gonna be the only one who looks half-zombie if we don't figure something out.

When I even attempt to move Celia only digs in further, which doesn't come as a surprise at all.

"I'm gonna go help them. Let me go."

"And I'm comfortable. Too bad."

"Sleep on Dimara, then. You can't keep me here forever."

Eventually she groans and lets go of my arm, but doesn't get very far. She only lands about half next to Dimara, who doesn't even move when I lift my leg out from under her backpack. At least someone's letting me get away with a fight.

"I hate you," Celia says, and if she doesn't shut up soon she's going to get a mouthful of grass.

"I have actual concrete proof that you don't, you know."

I've never seen her eyes flash open faster in her life. Even Dimara cracks an eye open at that, looking between the two of us without the faintest clue of what's going on. It's funny, to think that I could use yesterday as something against her. I didn't think I had any leverage there - she was the one that kissed _me_ first. But with the way she's looking at me now, it's becoming abundantly clear that even though she did it first, she still won't have any trouble tackling me if I so much as open my mouth.

"Don't even," she says flatly. "You're not actually going to say anything."

I wasn't, not in a million years, but now I'm kind of tempted.

"Tell me," Dimara demands. I probably wouldn't even have to tell her for her to figure it out.

"I'll tell you later," I say, and then stand up. Celia glares at me. I wonder if she was serious, if this was actually something she was going to regret down the line. She certainly looks it right now, joking or not. Dimara closes her eyes, apparently satisfied, and I nudge my boot into the side of Celia's hip. She looks up at me, still glaring, but I can see how quickly it falters when I smile. _Kidding,_ I mouth, and she shakes her head, covering her eyes with her entire arm. She rolls over until she can lean her head onto Dimara's shoulder, and I figure that's the end of that.

The others are all staring at us like a circus act, and then at me alone as I go over to sit down in front of them. It's about that time that I expect the four of them to turn their attention back to our belongings, or at anything else.

"Wow," Nadir says flatly.

"What?" I ask.

"You two are not subtle at all."

I freeze. Vance and Kelsea both seem to be on her side, but Tanis continues staring. After a moment she tilts her head, and her mouth falls open a bit.

"Oh," she says slowly. "Right. Got it."

"Late to the party, dude," Nadir replies, and finally starts rifling through the things at her feet. Attention safely diverted. I don't know if Tanis finally figuring it out adds to the circus act or not, but she seems perplexed.

I, for one, am nearly at that point as well.

Suddenly I understand completely why Blair went in the hovercraft.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

Now that it's been pointed out, I seem even more tired than usual.

At least I've got explanation for it now. With everything else going on, food was pretty much the least of my concerns. Why would I be thinking about food, when I had the actual grim reaper to worry about?

It explains the dizziness though, the fatigue. I could probably eat every single inch of food everybody else had and then die at least semi-happy, but I can't. My body can't handle it. Besides, everyone else needs to eat too. Who knows how long we'll be out here. Who knows what we'll have to turn to once we run out of food. I hear them all rifling through it for quite a while, before I realize I'm not going back to sleep any time soon.

They don't even notice me get up, focused as they are, and it's almost a relief. I had gotten enough looks last night, when Dimara had so helpfully announced that I was probably near starvation.

It's an odd feeling, to be starving and almost not realize it, because of everything else.

I round the far edge of the hovercraft, too aware of how hollow my stomach feels and the constant throbbing in my head. Despite escaping unnoticed, it's not long before I hear distinctive hopping footsteps crashing through the undergrowth.

"Should you be walking?" I ask, and Kelsea hops over a twisted branch right to my side.

"I'm working on it. Vance injected me with something. It already hurts a bit less, I think, but I can't tell if I'm imagining it or not."

She's probably imagining it, but for her sake I hope she isn't. It would be nice to have something go right for once. Other than the whole escaping the arena thing. I still haven't even decided if that's a good thing or not.

It's all a bunch of ideas, that are very slowly forming into real concerns and fears. This can't have all just happened for someone from the Capitol to come after us all and bury us in the woods. Something's happening out there, in a world that used to be ours. This place doesn't even feel like the same planet. It feels like we're cut off from everything we used to have.

And I just want to go home.

"What's that?" Kelsea asks, and gestures towards the scar on my arm. Or at least I think it's a scar. It was never a wound to begin with - it just burned when the shadows touched it, and since then I haven't been able to get rid of it. It stretches all the way from my elbow to my wrist, winding all the way around. Maybe she never saw anything like it. If she hasn't, I'm jealous.

"Long story," I say, and she frowns, and then pokes at the scythe.

"Where'd you get that?"

"Long story," I repeat, and her lips quirk up.

"Sounds like you've got a lot of stories."

If only she really knew. "How'd you break your ankle?"

"Fell down the stairs. Not gonna lie, until this point it's sucked. But I think it's going to get better. I really do."

Bless her for having the optimism of twelve people at once. If only it would seep out of her and into me. Maybe then we'd make some real progress. She braces a hand against the edge of the hovercraft and looks around. I can't see anyone else from here.

"How'd Vance get the scissors in his leg, then?"

Her lips purse, and she looks up at me. "Long story?"

It startles me so much that I nearly laugh. That's about as appropriate of an answer as we're going to get, and it's not like I can fault her for it. Not when I said the same thing, twice over. She's already given me more in return than I probably deserve, for someone she didn't even know until yesterday. In fact, her following me this far on one leg is more than I'll deserve in the next year.

"Did you kill anyone?"

Kelsea's still looking up at me as I say it, but her expression doesn't change.

"That's part of the long story," she informs me, and I can tell it's something I shouldn't have brought up. That's probably the last thing I should be asking anyone. "What about you?"

I shake my head. Her eyes widen, like she's surprised. She probably is.

"Think you're the only one."

It's the worst thought I've had thus far - that I'm spending my time in the woods with eight people who are effectively all murderers. They had to. They probably didn't have a choice, most of the time. But I watched Celia kill Laurel like it was nothing and Rory did the same to Parker only with more hesitance. I'm the only one here who hasn't, who's completely and utterly unprepared for what's ahead of us. Whatever it is.

"I don't want this," I say, looking down at the scythe, and she frowns. I really don't. I don't even know why I thought it would be a good idea to pick it up in the first place. I'm not fooling anyone. I'm not a killer, don't know if I'll ever be, now.

"You should probably hold onto it," she says quietly. "We might need it."

And that's exactly why I don't want it. I don't want to kill anyone, even if they come out of the woods to put a bullet in my head.

I almost want to shove it at her, to force her to take it, but she doesn't deserve that burden either.

"I'm just— I'm going for a walk. I won't be long."

Kelsea doesn't try and follow me this time. Even if I want to let go of the scythe I can't make myself do it. Maybe I'll just wander in circles, or maybe I'll stumble upon the person who's just finally going to end it. That's what I've been waiting for, since Parker died. Since Rory grabbed me and told me that I was going to live instead of die.

I was so ready for it. I was so convinced I was dead, and everyone else probably was too.

Right now, being alive sounds more terrifying.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

Rooke doesn't come back for nearly eight hours.

When Kelsea said he wouldn't be gone long, I thought twenty minutes, max. When it hit one hour I was convinced he got lost. When it hit four, and then five, Tanis had me convinced he'd been eaten by a bear, or a pack of wolves. When he finally does come back it's nearly dark outside, and he nearly trips and falls right into the middle of our supplies there's so little light.

Our flashlights did nothing to the trees, just made their shadows bounce back at us, and no one was willing to go far to look for him. Not in the middle of this.

He disappears into the hovercraft without a word to any of us, and we all watch him go.

"Man, he is not okay," Dimara says, echoing what we're all thinking. I'm surprised he came back at all.

"Should someone go talk to him?" Kelsea asks. I'm pretty sure she would have already gotten up, if Vance wasn't nearly forcing her into a sitting position.

"I'll go," I sigh, even though I'm not sure why I'm volunteering. I'll attribute it to the fact that I have to fill my water bottle anyway, and running water seems to be the only thing we have in abundance. Mental stability sure isn't one of them.

I can feel everyone watching me as I ascend the ramp. Apparently silence is the third thing we have a lot of, when there's nothing else to say.

Rooke's already managed his second disappearing act of the day and is long gone. My footsteps are echoing around, but besides that everything else inside is quiet. Or almost everything.

"Is everyone just making it their mission to stomp around as loudly as possible?"

Blair hasn't opened his eyes, hasn't even rolled over to look at me, but he apparently doesn't need to. He hasn't moved out of his original spot. We've all been in here at least once today, rotating in and out. Checking on him, even if some of us aren't really equipped to handle it.

It's been five hours since I was last here, since I last looked down at him, but somehow he sounds worse. More terrible than I would've expected him to.

"Did you see where Rooke went?" I ask, already knowing the answer is no. He doesn't move.

"Thought he was gone."

I don't know how he can sound this much worse. It shouldn't be possible for him to deteriorate this much in a span of a few hours, not when I thought they had fixed it. Vance had said it earlier - that Blair looked like he'd rather die, than try to walk around again. But now I can hear it in the sound of his voice, too.

"Are you alright?"

He cracks his eyes open, just enough to look up at me standing over him. His eyes are dazed, unfocused. He's heard my voice. He knows it's me. But if I hadn't spoken, I don't think he'd know it was me. For all I know, he's in a completely different world right now. I wouldn't blame him. It would be easier than sitting here, than living in the middle of constant pain.

"It's not getting any better," he says quietly, and I have to crouch down by his side to even hear him. I don't think it'd take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Even if it wasn't going to get better, though, I think we were all hoping it would at least remain stagnant, until...

Until what? Until we find help? We don't even know if help's out there.

"I'm gonna go get someone," I tell him. "Don't move."

I shouldn't have even said it. As soon as he hears the words it's like a trigger he can't ignore. He tries to move, tries to roll over just the slightest bit in my direction, like he's forgotten that he can't just do that. Maybe he has, to be honest. The second he moves, too fast, I see the pain hit him again. It's worse this time. It really shouldn't have been possible for it to get any worse, but I'm witnessing it right now.

My hands hover uselessly in mid-air, because I feel like I can only make it worse.

The bandages, already stained through with blood, bloom with new spots of it. I feel a little sick.

"It's getting worse," he says again. "God, how is it getting worse?"

"It'll go away," I manage. "Just - just give it a second."

It's not going away. I wait for the pain to leave his face and it doesn't. I don't know whether to bolt and go get someone and hope that he doesn't decide to bleed out in the thirty seconds that I'm gone, or just sit here and hope.

"You'd think being a Career would prepare you for this type of shit," I say, slightly strained and it doesn't come out as a joke. Not in the way I wanted it to. What in the world would prepare someone for this? I thought the initial shock of getting out of the arena was bad, but this is ten times worse. This is what he got for doing it. This was his thanks.

"You'd think," he chokes out, and his face contorts. "You'd think - with the training and the added bonus of my dad kicking the shit out of us on a daily basis when we were little, but nope. Really didn't do anything."

Okay, file that under things I really didn't need to know, things that I probably shouldn't know. Now would be a great time to run in the opposite direction and actually go get someone, before he keeps going. He's actually losing it. If he remembers any of this, if he lives through it, he's not going to remember any of this. I'd guarantee it.

He shifts again, and I can tell he's trying to make it better, but the tide won't turn. He's past the point of making it better. He probably passed that point a few hours ago, laying in here alone, and none of us knew it.

I put a hand on his good arm, and that's enough to still him, although it doesn't change anything.

The floor creaks, and I look up. Rooke's leaning around the corner, eyes wide.

"Something's wrong," I say. "Go get someone."

If he had refused, I was fully prepared to rip him a new one, but he nods and quickly skirts around the two of us, headed back outside.

"Something's wrong," Blair echoes back, so quietly I almost don't hear him. Maybe that's the one thing that resonates, the one thing that makes sense.

It would be so much easier if something would just make sense.

* * *

I promised a normal length, and I delivered. That will be void in later chapters, but for now I swear it will stay this way. And I'll give you some warning, when it starts to go downhill again.

Had a pretty terrible night yesterday so I just wanna say how much I appreciate you guys and everyone who's still reading, reviewing, or even just talking to me and putting up with my bullshit all the time. Means a lot.

Until next time.


	33. One Step Forward

Outskirts of District Two.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

Thinking about it all night doesn't help in the slightest.

Watching everyone trickle back into the hovercraft one by one doesn't help either. Most of us have absolutely zero reason to trust each other, to sit by each other's side, and it happens anyway. I think everyone's just scared, worried that this was all going to be for nothing, and that the person who did it in the first place is going to be the first of us to die.

I can't let it happen. I won't let it happen.

If I want to fix it, I have to confront the one thing I've been trying to avoid thinking about the past few hours.

I hear Celia's footsteps on the ramp behind me before I see her, and she settles down by my side.

"Everything alright in there?"

"Depends on what you define as alright," she sighs. "You know it's not."

I know. We all know, and we're dancing around it like it's going to help.

Nothing's going the way we want it to. At this point it's just trying to accept that, that's the issue. But when has anything ever really gone the way I expected it to?

"Was I just stupid, for thinking from the beginning that this was going to be easy?"

"The Games? No. But this is uncharted territory. No one would expect you to deal with this easily."

"Even the Games, though."

"Because of Oeshe, or?"

"Did Blair tell you about that?"

"Yeah," she admits. "When you two were gone looking for supplies. I guess I wasn't as surprised as I felt like I should've been? The last thing you knew for sure was that she was with me, so when she showed up alone—"

"I don't even remember what I was thinking, honestly."

Celia shrugs. "And sometimes there doesn't need to be a reason. Sometimes shit just happens. Would it have been awesome that everything worked out alright and that our alliance was whole and that no one had to kill someone else? Sure. But I'm not about to leap down your throat about it."

I feel like she should. I feel like someone should, anyway. There's no way Celia killing two virtual strangers is anywhere near as bad as me killing my District partner and one of my former allies, especially with me unable to give a reason that would be acceptable for either.

I guess I just thought I wouldn't care. About anything. That I would do it and not look back.

And with everything that's happening now, I'm completely unable to.

I don't look back at the hovercraft. Every time I do, I feel the anxiety ratchet up even further.

I sigh. It doesn't help.

"Rory seems pretty convinced that if we don't do something he's going to die. I think everyone else is starting to catch on too," I say.

Everyone else isn't just starting to catch on. Everyone else is starting to get hit with the realization that we're going to lose someone when we finally don't want it to happen. We spent nine days thinking everyone else would have to die, nine days wondering when it would finally be us. It's not supposed to happen now, when we finally might be able to live.

"It has to be infected," Celia agrees. "There's no other reason for him to have gone downhill that quickly. If there's infection in his arm, then it's only a matter of time until it spreads to the rest of him, and then it'll—"

"It'll kill him," I finish. "If it's not already."

The worst part is, I think Celia has the same idea I do. The exact one I've thought about half a dozen times, over the past few hours, and pushed away just as quickly because I really didn't want to consider that our only option. If we don't decide soon, a decision will be made for us. One that I don't think any of us will particularly enjoy.

"Not it," Celia says quickly.

"You can't _not it_ this situation," I insist.

"Too bad. I'm not doing it."

"You can't make me chop off his fucking arm alone. You can't."

"I never said I'd make you do it alone. I'm just not actually doing it. That's on you."

I knew it would be on me. Even if Celia didn't say anything, even already knowing that Rory won't. It was always going to be me. I'll have to tell everyone else, have to sit down and actually do it. Have to look Blair in the eyes and arguably make it even worse than it already is.

"We have to tell him," I say quietly, and Celia grabs my arm, pulling me to my feet after her. I could argue, put up a decent fight, but I already know what she's doing. We need to get this over with, and not just because neither of us really want to do it. The longer we leave him, the worse it gets. The stronger the chance that we lose him for good.

Everyone's just as we left them, in a loose circle, not talking at all. Not really that surprising. Blair's staring vacantly at the floor, skin deathly pale. I think that's the worst part. He already looks half-gone.

His eyes at least flicker up to mine when I crouch next to him, dazed as they are.

"Don't say it," he says. "Don't say whatever you're thinking. Please."

Figures, that this is the most clarity he's had in hours. He couldn't just be out for this.

"You don't even know what I'm thinking."

"I know I'm not going to be a fan of it."

I really wonder how much has to be told to him, and how much he just inherently knows. It sure seems like most things just fall on the latter side. Even those words have exhausted him, though, and he lowers his head back to his floor. Closes his eyes. Celia nudges me in the back of the shoulder, trying to urge me on further. Making me do it, just like she said she would.

I look at Kelsea. I know she ended up with it, somehow. "Where's the bonesaw?"

Blair's eyes re-open much faster than I would have expected them to, but he doesn't say anything. No one does. There's no noise, save for Kelsea carefully reaching for her backpack and dragging it into the middle of the circle. Half of the group's looking at me like I've finally lost the last of my marbles. It's certainly a possibility. Rory puts both hands over his face, like he saw this coming from a mile away and really wished he hadn't.

"You can't actually do this," Blair manages. "You can't."

"Watch me," I respond. Kelsea wrestles the bonesaw out of her bag and hands it to me, albeit reluctantly.

"I feel like dying would actually be more pleasant," he says, and closes his eyes when I go to look at him. As if I don't feel bad enough about this. Does he really think I want to do this?

"Too bad. I'm not letting you die."

There's really no good way to do this, but the level of pain he's in is already bordering on unmanageable. At the end of the day, I probably can't make it that much worse. Or at least that's what I have to keep telling myself. It's the one thing keeping my hands steady.

"If anyone wants to take off I'd do it now," Celia offers. Everyone is shifting around, wondering what they're supposed to do. I reckon that a few of them do want to run, but don't want to be the one to do it. If I really had an option, I probably wouldn't be here either.

I put a hand on his shoulder when Celia starts unwrapping the bandages on his other side, as shoddy as they are. They're hardly holding anything together in the first place. There's only maybe two odd inches of his arm still attached to his shoulder; it probably won't even bleed that much, not in comparison to the amount we've already seen. It's the pain that's going to be bad, sawing through skin and muscle and what's left of his bones.

I can still hear him screaming from two nights ago, and now I'm going to make it worse.

"I'm just - not gonna look," Rory informs us, holding both of Blair's legs to the ground, and true to his words looks in the complete opposite direction.

Celia finally finishes with the bandages. It's hard to look at. There's too much exposed - it's no wonder he's as bad as he is. He's shaking, vaguely. If he had the ability to get to his feet I'm sure he'd be ambling off away from us right now, no matter how slow the process was.

"Nobody let him move," I instruct. "Let's not make this any worse than it has to be."

Blair looks right at me, when I shift to his right side, the blade hovering above the junction between his neck and shoulder. Celia grabs his other arm and holds tight.

"You're not gonna let me die?" he asks, and that's genuine fear in his voice. It doesn't even sound right, coming from him.

"I told you I wouldn't."

He has to believe it. We all do.

The blade touches his skin for the first time, and his whole body tenses. We all feel it.

It still doesn't prepare me for the screaming.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

It takes him too long to pass out.

I get very quickly why Rory looks away the whole time it's happening. Eventually I have to move forward to help him hold Blair's legs down.

I'll never be able to understand the pain he's in, and hopefully I never will, but his screaming comes close. It's the kind of scream that drives every other thought right out of your head, until it's the only thing I can think of, the only thing I can hear. That scream is enough to put every single person around him in the same position. I can't make myself go anywhere else mentally, even if the thought is tempting. I can't.

I don't know how long it takes. All I know is that somewhere along the way his screaming cuts off, and when I chance a glance up he's finally gone out, succumbed to the pain. It's almost a relief.

Now that he's gone quiet, though, I hear every second of Dimara cutting through the last of whatever's still holding his arm to his shoulder, and then it comes free.

That isn't the best thing I've ever had to think about.

"Can I go now?" Rory asks, and doesn't even wait for a clear response before he's gone, headed for the ramp.

There's blood everywhere, all over again. Not as much as the first time, but it's still not great. Vance makes the mistake of looking, just once, and looks like he's about two seconds from throwing up.

"If this doesn't work," Nadir starts.

"Just chopped off his arm for no reason," Dimara grits out. "Got it."

"What are we supposed to do with the arm?" I ask, and Rooke makes a choked noise. It's not Blair's anymore, not really. Just a detached thing that has no purpose anymore, and someone's got to get rid of it, right? I don't think anyone has any desire to sit around with it nearby. There's only a few people left in here who would actually be willing to get rid of it, and most of them are preoccupied with bigger issues.

"Give me that," I say to Kelsea, and she gives me her backpack without a fight. I dump the remaining contents on the ground next to her. The arm is at least still semi-wrapped in bandages, mostly concealed. That doesn't make it much easier.

Rooke and Vance watch on, slack-jawed, as I carefully nudge it into the backpack. Carefully, like something's going to hurt if I don't. It's just an arm, I remind myself. An arm that was attached to someone a minute ago. Nadir is giving me a look out of the corner of her eye that says more than words ever would.

This should really bug me more than it is.

I grab the bag and head outside, dismissing the weight as nothing more than typical supplies. It would be easy, had I not just dumped them all over the floor of the hovercraft.

Rory's pacing the treeline, trying and failing not to look worried. My feet hit the grass and he looks up, feet stuttering to a halt.

I don't stop moving. I haven't left this little clearing, since we landed. The trees will almost feel like home.

"Where are you going?"

"To find a cliff to throw this off of."

It takes him a moment to put two and two together, and when he does he grimaces. He looks between me and the hovercraft, unmoving.

"Unless you'd rather do it?" I ask, and he shakes his head.

"God, no. I'm not touching it."

We have to have this all backwards. He should be the one hacking off appendages and limbs without any remorse, the one who this doesn't effect. Not me. How would he feel, if I told him about Isi's fingers, and where they ended up?

I'm hardly into the trees when I hear his footsteps start up again, first through the grass and then along the metal ramp. After that I no longer hear him. I'm not even a hundred yards in when I hear him jogging after me, and he slows by my side.

"Thought you didn't want to do it."

"I'm not. But I'm hungry - you're hungry. And I don't want to be there anymore."

My stomach gurgles at about the same time I glance at the bow in his hand. It's not the worst idea, surely. If Rooke can go wandering off for eight hours and come back intact than the two of us can. Going off into the woods is either your best chance at coming back out, or the worst.

"We'll have to be careful," I say casually. "Probably lots of bears around."

He narrows his eyes at me. "There can't be that many."

"There are. I can smell them."

"You cannot _smell_ bears. Don't bullshit me."

"Oh, so your Four talents are valid but mine aren't? I see how this works."

He laughs, and probably scares off everything in a half mile radius in the process, but if it helps me forget about the literal arm in my backpack, I'll learn to live with it.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

I'm not quite sure why I let them go so easily.

Rory only comes back up the ramp to tell us they're leaving, and I'm the first one he comes into contact with. Everyone else is too busy with one of two things - actually helping, or sticking their fingers in their ears and waiting for it to be over.

The two of them disappear off into the woods, and no one else knows but me.

It's over an hour before anyone even points it out. By then it's at least fixed to the point where I'm almost convinced that Blair isn't going to die at any random second. Rooke's wandered off again, but Vance went limping off after him, and I don't think they ever left the hovercraft.

I don't even notice Nadir leave, but I hear her footsteps echo down the ramp. Celia murmurs something quietly to Dimara. She takes some of the water bottles with her, but is gone too long for it to be just that.

"Where did the two of them go?" Dimara asks quietly, not long after. There's blood all over her hands but she hasn't made any effort to get to her feet.

"I don't know. Rory said they wouldn't be gone long."

"Didn't Rooke tell you that, too?"

That's exactly what he said. Maybe I was foolish for believing him yesterday, and then the very same words today. Any number of things could happen out there.

"I'm not being very good company right now, am I?"

"It's fine," I respond. I wouldn't expect anyone to be making idle conversation right now, least of all her.

"If you need five minutes, you can go. I don't mind."

I completely mind. No offense to Blair, but I really don't want to be left alone with him. Not when if I looked at him from the right angle I would probably assume he was dead already. It's too close to Houston, hits too hard. They're completely different situations.

Blair's not dead.

Dimara looks up at me, though. Everyone has to crack eventually. Mine just came earlier than most, because I doubt anyone else here woke up to their only allies dead body beside them.

Hers is coming right now, I think. We can all see it.

She pulls herself to her feet though, inch by inch, until she can look down at the both of us.

"You sure?"

I nod. It's a miracle that I'm not able to fully run yet, or else I probably would be. I shift a little closer to him, and Dimara scrubs a hand over her face. I'm beyond thankful that all the blood's dried through.

"I won't go far. So if you need anything—"

I nod again. I don't see what could go so wrong that I'd have to go get her, but you never know. She still has a hand over her face as she walks off, and I scoot closer. The toes of my boots brush against his side, and that's about as far as I'm willing to go.

He doesn't look any better, but it was kind of hard for him to look any worse, too. Him being unconscious is almost better, because at least he isn't feeling anything. Being out probably would be easier. At least he doesn't have to think about the consequences, about what's coming for us next.

Something shifts against the edge of my boot. I freeze.

You're kidding me, right? This isn't happening, not two minutes after Dimara left. It can't be.

I hold my breath, and it happens again. Just the barest amount of movement. I can't even tell if Blair's properly awake, I just know that he's still there. In whatever way exists.

"Don't move," I say, and it doesn't even feel like I'm talking to him. His head tilts towards the sound of my voice, but his eyes are hardly open. He's not listening, though, if he even properly heard me in the first place. He's still shifting, his hand moving like he's trying to figure out what's missing. I see it moving towards the bandages that they just spent an hour putting back together, searching.

I panic and reach for his hand, pulling it back down to his side.

"It's gone," I say, and my voice nearly gets caught in my throat. I thought people were only supposed to crack once, and it feels like it's going to happen again.

His hand goes still under mine, like the words finally hit.

I don't try to stop the tears, because I don't think anyone's going to care. Not that anyone's around to. Blair's head turns back to me, though, still with only a sliver of his eyes open.

His hand tightens around mine just for a second. It's comforting for the same amount of time, until I realize that's probably as long as he can manage to hold on.

He can't let go, though. _I_ can't let go.

I don't know what will happen if I do.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

I know better than to get Dimara talking right now.

She walks past me and deeper into the hovercraft without a word, taking her water bottle out of my hand when I offer, and that's it.

Nadir's kicking at the grass outside, doing nothing more than ruin it even further than our tromping boots already have. Vance and Rooke are in another room, where I'm fairly certain Vance is trying to underhandedly bully Rooke into talking to him. I don't think it's going so well.

I knew Tanis was gone - but it's the distinct lack of Rory that's worrying. He seems to have a strong penchant for pulling a disappearing act on me. That's the one thing kissing him hasn't solved, apparently.

He can handle himself. Probably.

The probably is what makes me anxious. I'd have more faith in Tanis to fight off a wild animal, currently, and I have no idea what she's ever even fought. If anything, besides Isi's never-ending temper.

Blair is still when I finally get back, and Kelsea is facing away from me, shoulders shaking slightly. The noise of her crying is louder than that of my footsteps. He hasn't moved, and it doesn't look like anything's wrong. If something had gone wrong I'd have hoped she would have gotten some help.

"Everything alright?" I ask, and she sits up ram-rod straight, frantically wiping at her face.

"Yeah. Sorry."

There's no one else in sight. I can just barely see the outside from here, and Nadir still kicking at the grass like it's doing something for her. More power to her if it is.

"Do you know where they went?"

Up until this point Kelsea has kept her eyes pinned on the floor, refusing to look me in the eye. Now she looks up, eyes red-rimmed, face damp.

"Rory said something about hunting. And Tanis had the - you know."

Unfortunately. Of course we couldn't have had an actual conversation about this, though, before the two of them fucked off into the woods. As if we don't have enough to worry about. I'd go after them, if I had a direction. If it hadn't been what feels like forever since they both walked out.

Kelsea's making me feel bad; not in the same way that Rory did, weeks ago now. She's the only one who's really had a problem fixed, since Vance went to town on her ankle. It never really occurred to me that she's thirteen, that she killed someone when Rooke didn't.

The last thirteen year old I had any contact with was one at the training center, who looked like they'd rather let the ground swallow them whole than hit their opponent. That's a lot like what I expected Kelsea to be. What she should be.

I'm really not equipped to deal with this.

I sit down next to her, crossing my legs, and she only moves enough to give me room nearly against his side. Her hand is in his, another reminder of how much smaller she is than the rest of us. In more ways than one.

It feels like I should put an arm around her shoulders, do something. That's probably what Rory would do.

I stay put.

"I'm sorry," Kelsea says eventually. "It's just; it's a lot."

"I get it," I respond. I should not be the group counselor. Not for Rory, not for Dimara, and definitely not for her. She drops her chin on her knees, and sighs. At least she's stopped crying. This is a lot to _me,_ and I arguably signed up for most of it. Not for the part where Blair jumped off a balcony nearly ninety stories in the air, but I never knew what the Games would look like near the end. No one did. I just really didn't think they'd look like this.

Not a game at all. Not anymore.

We sit there for what feels like hours. Dimara comes back out, eventually, but she looks exhausted. She leans against the opposite wall and drifts off. Nadir eventually scoots herself back up the ramp, sitting just on the edge, but doesn't come any closer.

"He fell asleep while I was talking to him," Vance says, and then drops himself awkwardly down on Kelsea's other side. "I don't know whether I should be offended or glad that he fell asleep."

If Rooke's one less thing that we have to keep track of, then I'll choose to be glad.

Kelsea smiles and leans into his side instantly. It's not just her eyes - it's his too. There's something in both of them, lingering just at the bottom. Something haunted.

It's different for them than it is to us. Even to Rory, who didn't want to do it. At least he knew what he was doing.

At least he was ready to lose his life. None of them were.

Blair doesn't move, and Kelsea doesn't let go of his hand, limp as it is. The sky starts to darken all over again.

"Holy shit," Nadir says.

I was convinced she'd fallen asleep, but she leaps to her feet at an alarming speed. I'm almost prepared for the worst, because what else is new?

It's nothing like that. It's just Rory and Tanis, emerging from the woods. Tanis has lost the backpack, and is dragging her feet a bit through the grass, but Rory's walking surprisingly light, with—

"Is that a fucking turkey?" I yell, and Dimara shoots awake. I'm already halfway down the ramp, and nearly trip over my own two feet when I hit the grass, but it would be so worth it. He smiles, and that is absolutely a damn turkey dangling out of his hand, and I've never been happier to see something this weird in my life.

"I am officially in love with you," I inform him, and throw my arms around him. He laughs into my shoulder.

"That was quick," he mutters, and I can't even hit him for it. I really can't. What I should do is kiss him for it, right here in front of everyone, because he deserves it. Because it would be better than the rest of today.

I pull myself back, though. Baby steps. Everything has to be.

He's still beaming, absolute idiot, and someone else starts laughing too, the sound bordering on hysterical.

Baby steps are still a step. Everything's pointing to how badly this could end, but we've taken the first step.

Maybe tomorrow is finally when we get our feet off the ground.

* * *

Telling me not to do something or to leave someone specific alone never works.

Unfortunately for all of us.

Not much to say here. Hope everyone's doing well.

Until next time.


	34. Into The Unknown

Outskirts of District Two.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

It feels, very mildly, like half my body's on fire.

I can't pull myself out of the fog long enough to decide if I should be grateful that it's only half. For a long while I try in vain to open my eyes and see nothing but spots, gray and black, constantly shifting.

Being only half there, it takes me a while to realize the shifting won't stop. No matter how hard I concentrate, nothing will make it stop.

Am I moving? It feels like I'm moving, even if there's no way I actually am. The agony is too strong, shooting through me like a bolt of lightning. That's the only thing I'm getting clearly, the only thing I'm registering over and over. There's scratchy fabric under my cheek, and when I try to move my fingers they come in contact with more of the same.

"Are you actually awake back there?"

Oh. Well, that's Rory. At least I have the ability to distinguish a voice. One point to me.

That still doesn't explain anything else, though. Is that him I'm holding onto, then? He's the only one who spoke.

"Are we moving?" I manage.

"Well, I am. You're not. Are you okay?"

Don't really know how to answer that one just yet. My vision is starting to clear, and I'm pretty much just staring at the ground, scrubby grass and rocks. I can see Rory's legs, too, the back and forth motion making me dizzy all over again.

"Are you carrying me?"

"Sure am. Do you want me to stop?"

Well, that makes sense. Sort of. Now that I think about it, I can feel his hands wrapped around the backs of my knees too, holding me against his back. It's no wonder his voice is the only one that came through clear - his head is two inches away from mine. I can feel him slowing, the longer he goes without a response, and I try to re-tighten my arm around his shoulders and neck, letting my head rest back against his shoulder. I blink, trying to look around, but can't really make anything out. I can see everyone else, or at least their outlines. And the woods. Lots of trees. The mountains are a hair closer than they were before. That would be comforting, if I knew Two didn't suck just as much as the rest of the world.

"Where's the hovercraft?"

"Three miles back the way we came. You ask a lot of questions."

 _Why_ are we three miles away from the hovercraft? How long has everyone been walking while I've been out? Why do I not remember being included in this conversation in the first place? Right, probably because I wasn't.

"We had to leave," Rory explains quietly, before I can even ask. "No point in staying there forever. I'd rather go walking around looking for something than sit there forever."

Well, he may want to walk around but I was perfectly content slowly dying on the floor of the hovercraft. Or at least I was, until _someone_ decided to take my arm off.

I can just barely see Dimara, at the head of the group. It would be nice, having someone to hate for it, but it can't be her. She wouldn't have had to chop it if I hadn't jumped in the first place. Maybe I'll blame Seren for it, down the road. She's the one that told me to. I wonder how far back I can trace it, before I find someone to really hate.

It's so hard to focus, when every time Rory takes a step I can feel it, what's missing. There's no other arm for me to hold on with, nothing on my right side.

"Future advice," Rory says. "Eat less. Carrying you for three miles has not been easy."

"I _literally_ don't have an arm," I mumble into his shoulder.

"Stop reminding me."

I can just barely see, peeking over his shoulder. Rory's the furthest back, probably from carrying me, but Kelsea has turned back and is looking at me. I'd give her a thumbs up, if I didn't think letting go of him would result in me hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes. Not really something I'm invested in trying out right now. Almost everyone realizes, at some point, glancing back at me like that means something, and I turn my eyes to the trees on our left.

The sky's overcast, casting everything beyond the first few feet in a deep shadow, but I'd rather stare at nothing than have everyone look me in the eyes like I'm a dying animal. I've had enough of that over the past few days.

"What is that?" I ask eventually. Maybe I do ask too many questions.

"What's what?" Rory asks, and follows my gaze. I don't know what it is. More gray, almost blending into the treeline, but it's too angular. Nothing on the outskirts of Two is perfect, not even close, but are those walls?

Rory slows to a halt, both of us looking off.

"Hey!" he calls, and everyone in front of us stops too, turning around to look at us. Rory nods off to the left and everyone looks off into the distance, at the same thing. Wondering. Most, if not all of the ruins from the Dark Days have been gone for years now. There's no telling what this is.

"Is that actually a building, or am I seeing things?" Nadir asks. To think, that I'm the one who saw it first. How unobservant can one group of people be? Everyone's tired, everyone's confused, but we're quickly setting a new low on our standards. I keep waiting for someone to pipe up, to state the obvious. _Hey, guys, maybe we shouldn't go in that direction; maybe we should run the opposite way, as quickly as we can._

No one says nothing.

In any other circumstance, I know at least half the people here would go in the opposite directions. You don't go towards the unknown. That's what gets you killed, usually.

This isn't usually, though. If this was the usual, only one would of us would be alive right now.

Dimara sighs. "Let's go, then."

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

It's a half mile off, maybe, and it feels like it takes us six hours to get there.

Everyone is wary, more wary than I've ever seen a single group of people. Apparently some of them are just now learning the definition of caution, and hopefully it's for the better.

It doesn't really seem that way, the closer we get. The walls that he had seen off in the distance are crumbled into pieces, some of them half missing. There's not that many, but they're spread out over a fairly large area. The surrounding forest is barren, the trees nothing more than mere saplings. The undergrowth is thick, ivy creeping over the edges of the walls, and there's no noise at all. Not from the birds, not from the wind.

I don't like it at all.

For the first time, though, I think everyone's feeling the same way I am. There's a level of caution in their eyes that wasn't there before. That's almost never there, if I'm being real. Up until now I thought I was the only one spending too long dwelling things, the only one with any sort of real fears. But now everyone moves the same, together. I'm able to shove down the overwhelming concern, for whatever we're stepping into the middle of, but everyone else knows anyway. Everyone else is feeling it too.

Even if they don't know what's going on in my head, they know how long I disappeared for. People don't just do that for no reason.

"Can everyone please just agree to be careful?" Rory asks, and for once there's no dissent. Blair narrows his eyes over his shoulder suspiciously, but doesn't say anything.

It's hard, to watch everyone trickle off into their groups, their pairs. Another reminder that everyone has someone except for me, someone to lean on, to look to when they need help. For anything.

I shove my hands in my pockets and start walking.

Everyone else's voices get fainter and fainter, as we take different paths through the walls. There are more than I initially thought, even some pieces of what must have been the roof still barely hanging on. The ground's crumbling in places, but when I look down I can't see anything but darkness. Is there stuff below this too, underground?

"Am I the only one seeing bones?" Tanis shouts, and that's one way to ruin the subtlety of things. Her voice echoes off the walls and bounces back to me, halfway across the clearing. She's kicking at something on the ground, something long and off-white.

Human, or animal? I feel like if it was a suspected animal, she wouldn't be asking. We're in the middle of the _woods._

I come across one a few moments later, about the size of my forearm. It certainly looks human, if I had to guess. Why are there bodies this far out in the woods, and how did they all end up here, of all places?

This isn't just some random District escapee, who made it this far out into the woods before they met their untimely demise. I have no idea what this is.

The walls start to thin out a few yards ahead before they stop entirely. After that the forest is nearly touched, shielding this place of ruins from everything beyond it. Right at the edge of the trees and up against the last wall there's two metal doors, nearly buried in the ground. I kick some of the dust off them and reach for the handle. It feels like a bad idea, even as I do it, but with a few harsh tugs the one on the right comes free. It swings open with a harsh, grating creak and nearly nails me in the face it springs open so fast.

Everyone must've heard it, but I don't think anyone can see me from this angle.

Leading down from the doors is a set of stairs, and I can't see the bottom. I can hear water dripping, faintly, and the stone is slick with it. The stairs are half crumbled to pieces, but when I test my foot against the first of them it holds firm. The ground underneath my feet was crumbling a few minutes ago, hinting at something beneath it, and I think I just found it.

I take a deep breath. They're just stairs, nothing more. There's no reason for me to be scared of a set of stairs.

I should've asked someone for their backpack, so I could at least have a flashlight, but I duck my head and start down the stairs. The light from the open doorway is only visible for so long, and the stairs go on much longer than that.

"Rooke!"

I freeze, and look back up. Vance is silhouetted at the top, holding onto the edge of the door.

"Are you fucking insane?"

"Probably," I mutter. It sure does feel like it, these days. He didn't hear me, obviously, and he disappears from the doorway, so I keep walking. If he's not going to make any effort to stop me, then he has no room to talk.

The stairs start to widen, towards the bottom, and my feet leave the last of the broken stairs and finally hit flat ground. It's a very long hallway, and most of the ceiling looks like it's going to collapse any second, and that's the part not riddled with holes. There are doors on either side, gradually getting more frequent the further I look, but I can only see so far. It's like the stairs all over again. I hear footsteps descending behind me but force myself to take a few paces inwards.

The beam of a flashlight cuts over my shoulder when Vance finally hits the bottom, but it only proves that the hallway doesn't end. Not anytime soon.

"You're walking way too fast for someone who's still limping," he points out, panting slightly. "They found another set of stairs on the other side of the clearing. Hopefully they meet up."

Hopefully. Seven people might be able to figure their way out of this, but I'm not so sure about the two of us.

But that all depends on how far it goes.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

It would be a lot easier to act less concerned about Rooke if he didn't constantly do shit like this.

Disappearing for hours on end, wandering down endless staircases with no one watching him - it's only a matter of time until someone finds a leash to put him on. At least I can follow him, even as slow going as the process is.

He doesn't really seem daunted; if he is, he's hiding it very well. Eight kids hardly even know what trees look like, but right now I'd be grateful to be above ground, in the middle of the forest. This reminds me too much of the arena, and not even the sunlight spilling through the cracks in the ceiling can do anything about it. It's all I can do to keep an eye on Rooke's back, before he turns a corner and leaves me here.

I crack open one of the doors on our left and it's filled with nothing but rubble, the ceiling entirely gone.

Nothing's bad happened, not yet, but I know my optimism when it comes to bad things is all but non-existent at this point, and I know exactly when it all left.

There's no telling where the others made it in but we turn right away, headed in their vague direction. The hallways get wider, the floor sloping downwards. I can see enough ahead of us with the flashlight that I can tell the hallway opens up. Rooke makes it their first, hands grabbing onto a metal railing, and I stop just behind them.

The hallway ends there and breaks off right and left, and straight forward is nothing. You can look up and down for several stories, like we're in the middle of a hollow column.

"It's like the diagrams of Thirteen they put in our history textbooks," Rooke says.

"This isn't Thirteen."

It's not. What's left of Thirteen is on the opposite side of the country, but he's right. It looks almost exactly it. It doesn't look like it goes down nearly as far, and we're still not far from the surface itself, but it looks like someone tried their best to make a replica of it.

"Hey!" A voice calls out and echoes through the building, and I catch sight of Celia, a floor down on the opposite side, staring across at us. Everyone else is over there too, looking around, almost in wonder. What the hell did we just find?

"I think I know what it is," Rooke says, very quickly, and starts heading for them before I can even think to ask. It's a good thing they're not very far off, even if they are across the way, because I don't think I'm equipped to be walking this much in one day. Hell, I don't think even a normal, able-bodied person does this much in one day. I need a break.

"You're thinking what I'm thinking, aren't you?" Rooke asks, looking directly at Blair. "What else could it be?"

He shrugs, at least as much as he can on someone's back, with one arm. It's still not something I've really come to terms with, so I can't imagine how he's feeling about it.

"The Capitol sent bombers this way five years ago. I mean, we all knew what it was, even if they wouldn't confirm it. You could see the smoke from the other side of the District."

Five years ago, after the 155th. When all the truth came out at once, and the Capitol put an end to it before it could get any more out of control. All those bodies up above... it's all the Sentinels they spent so long building, only to kill them in an instant. It's no wonder this place is so destroyed, if this is the exact place the Capitol came after.

"They're all dead though," Kelsea says.

"Not all of them," Nadir responds quietly, and that's the moment we all start looking around, wondering. Arker hasn't been seen in five years, and looking at what's around us, it's hard to imagine anyone having survived it. That still doesn't do anything to the thoughts running through all of our heads right now; what could still be here, lurking where we can't see them. _Who_.

"Spooky," Dimara says, very calmly, and Tanis snorts.

It's probably not the most fitting word, but it's still true. It feels like we're being watched, and there's no telling what way it's coming from. Not a great feeling to have. Like I said, way too similar to the arena for my liking.

"What are _you_ thinking?" Celia asks, and then pokes Rory in the arm. He's looking around thoughtfully, if not a bit tired, though I'm going to attribute that to him being the only one with the physical capabilities to haul Blair around.

"They lived here for _years_ ," he points out. "They were set down here. Food, weapons, communication. They had everything."

It's something we all knew, but it's still odd to think about. All of these people, these soldiers, living this far out from every boundary line, and they were practically thriving in it. Who knows how many people lived in this place over the years. Who knows how long it's even been here.

"Home sweet home?" Celia guesses, and well. It's not home, and I won't ever call it that.

But it is pretty sweet.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

There's too much of this place to look through in one day.

One lifetime, really. I feel like we've only touched the smallest part of it. It doesn't help that I don't think too many of us are really willing to go any further than a few floors down. Whatever electricity existed in the place a few years back is gone now, and our flashlights do nothing to the darkness that extends past the first five or so floors. It reminds me of the basement back in the red tower, where something could've peeled away from the darkness any second and killed one of us.

Nothing happens. I keep expecting something to happen.

"Are you coming back anytime soon?"

And then there's the walkie talkies.

I still don't even know who found them. Tanis found a whole room full of preserved food and water not long into it, and twenty minutes later Dimara had pitched one of the radios at my chest, where it had bounced off and hit the floor.

I've got Blair holding onto it, because I'm still holding onto him, but his arm is limp hanging down my chest. I'm pretty sure he's half asleep.

"Bring that up here so I can answer."

He does so with a groan, and nearly hits me in the chin with it. Half the time they're full of nothing but static, but Celia's voice came through clearly enough that time. Proximity thing, maybe.

"You talking to us?" I ask.

"Who else would I be talking to?"

"You realize everyone can hear you and not just me, right?"

I think that's something we're all learning. There's a bit of jostling on her end.

"Fine," Dimara says. "I'll just give you all codenames. You're Eagle Three—"

"Who's Two?"

"Celia, obviously. So you're Eagle Three, and Blair's Cripple One. Vance is Cripple Two."

"I'm not responding to that," comes Vance's voice, distantly from the other end. I can hear more than just him on the other side. Figures the two of us got left down here the longest.

"Anyway, are you coming up?"

"Yeah. Just taking me longer than normal, I have some extra baggage."

"I am not _baggage_ ," Blair mutters into my shoulder. He sounds exhausted, but that's better than unconscious from pain and bloodloss. I'll take current him over that any day. The radio clicks off and he lets his arm go again until it thunks into my side, the radio brushing against my ribs. It seems that everybody's gone back up, as close to the surface as they can get. The longer we stay down here the more it feels like we're going to be buried alive, and if I take the stairs faster than I normally would back up, Blair doesn't comment on it.

I can hear them all a ways off. Up until now it's felt weird, all moving together as one group. Acting like that's how it's been from the beginning. We were taught to be enemies, to expect to kill each other one day. When I finally find the the room they've all bunkered down in it doesn't feel like that. We may still be nervous, almost strangers, but it doesn't feel so foreign now, to turn a corner and see all of them together.

"He's yours now," I inform Dimara, and she helps me lower him to the floor. My back is never going to stop aching after this. Everyone else is already settled down. Food wise we're good, but still really nothing in the comfort department. It doesn't help that the ceiling is half gone, and the night sky above it is even darker than it should be, thunder rumbling off in the distance.

We're all exhausted. It doesn't help that we still don't know exactly what we're doing.

Blair claims one corner of the room and leans his head against the wall, Dimara sitting between him and Celia. I drop myself down on Celia's other side.

"Oh, sweet," Celia announces, and then claims my shoulder as her pillow, like she wasn't planning on doing that since the second I walked into the room. Even that amount of contact is good, helps me stay rooted to the ground.

Tanis is on the other wall, staring up through the giant hole in the ceiling. I think she likes being underground even less than the rest of us do.

The thunder gets louder and louder, and I feel my eyes growing heavy as the rain starts up. The rest of them are directly in it's path, and Nadir gets up without a word, dragging the blanket she's sharing with Tanis off and towards us. Blair moves his legs without even opening his eyes and she sits down where they were, next to his corner.

"Are we all just in agreement that the rain sucks now?" Rooke asks quietly, and he shuffles closer until he's sitting in front of us. Everyone else follows suit too, until the ceiling is covering all of us.

 _This_ almost feels too close, and everyone's thinking it. I can stretch out a foot in any one direction and practically manage to hit every single person. We could sleep in separate rooms - there's enough in this hallway.

No one shows any signs of leaving.

There's a lot of movement, a hint of uneasiness. Kelsea shuffles downwards until she's laying down and puts her head on Vance's good leg, staring as the rain gradually soaks the floor.

I know it's going to happen a few minutes before it does, and through my half-open eyes I see Blair start to turn. Dimara's trying to keep an eye on him, but there's really no point. All he does is turn, and sink to the floor a little bit more before he puts his head on her stomach, curling as close as he physically can when he can't touch anything with his right side.

"This is getting ridiculous," Dimara says flatly, but she drops an arm across his chest to hold him there, twisting until she's apparently comfortable.

"It's cold."

"You're on the fast track to having cuddled with me more in the past month than my girlfriend," she points out. "It's ridiculous."

Celia snickers into my shoulder, and I smile. I can't say I really blame him - it is cold, for the middle of summer and the wind coming in from the rain isn't helping any. Is this really the most intact room they could find up here? Apparently.

Nadir kicks out at Tanis, and then Vance, when both of them show signs of starting to smile too, cutting it off before it can even really begin.

This is weird. _Beyond_ weird. We're all thinking it - no one's trying to hide that. But realistically this is somehow the safest I've felt in two weeks. Any number of things could happen to us, but not from each other. Right now, the threats are going to come from outside.

I won't lie. It's worrying. But by this point I thought I'd be dead. I expected to be dead.

And I'm starting to become more grateful that I'm not.

* * *

 **Audrel Idelson, 25 years, Formerly of District Three.**

* * *

Of course it's one of the only times she's about to get nearly a full night of rest when it happens.

She has half a mind to ignore it. Everything in these past few days has been a dead end anyway, there's no reason for this one to be any different. But the slow, static beeping coming from the left monitor doesn't let up. It's different than the others, too. Not just a random, coincidental blip from somewhere outside District boundaries.

No, this is coming from somewhere she recognizes. A place she wants to forget but knows she can't.

Those coordinates are something burned into her brain. They went back, once, so many months after the 155th, but there was no point in staying. They had all agreed.

She thought after all this time that the original base was nothing more than a graveyard. There was no way any of the communications there should be up and running, no way a signal could be sent out of there. It had to be a rogue animal tripping a system that's almost dead, or a mistake.

She really didn't think it was.

She wrote the coordinates down and let the beeping continue as she stepped out of the room.

Everyone else was asleep, the hallways very quiet. This was her job and hers alone, and as every hour went by she was more convinced that they'd never find them. Those kids could've crashed into the ocean for all they knew, for all the information they had.

But they didn't.

She stops at the end of the hallway and bangs her fist against the lone door. It'll be a miracle if she doesn't wake the whole place up just from that.

"You guys better not be doing anything suspicious in there!" she shouts, and opens the door.

Luca's sitting in the middle of the floor, cross-legged, rifling through what looks like some of the stuff she gave him earlier. Mostly projections, about where they could've ended up. This was the only job they were really given, besides getting everyone out of the Capitol, and she knows Luca was on the fast track to losing hope about it.

They're really not good at finishing jobs.

Luca looks up at her, and Seren draws the blanket down from where it had been around her head to look at her too.

"What if we had been," he says flatly.

"Then I would have given you this and then went and found some bleach to pour into my eyes."

She offers the paper him and he takes it without a word, continuing to stare at in in silence.

"This is—"

"I know what it is," she says. "And it's where I just got a signal from."

Seren scrambles up and out of the blankets and across the bed to look at it, leaning over his shoulder. This can't just be a coincidence. They're out of them. She's been monitoring that place for years, just because. It was her home, once upon a time. A place that twisted them all inside out and then spit them back into the world without a shred of remorse for what they'd done.

"The Gamemakers were right, about the fuel," she confirms. "They never even made it past Two."

She waits, while the both of them continue staring at it, like the numbers are going to change. Like anything will.

Things only change if they make them.

Luca lowers the paper. "Go wake everyone else up. We've got somewhere to be."

* * *

And here continues the journey of this story into "seriously, what the hell are you doing, stop" territory. The most fun territory to be in, tbh.

Officially summer! Hope everyone's having a good time and hopefully either done school or about to be done.

Until next time.


	35. Forget The Past

Outskirts of District Two; former Sentinel base.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

I can hardly move when I wake up.

Celia's on one side, apparently not content cuddling just with Rory, because she's attempting to use me too. Blair's still asleep half on top of me on the other side, but at least he stopped shivering at some point. He's moved over enough that Nadir's gained enough room to steal the corner he was previously in, and Tanis must have inched after her at some point to keep a hold of the meager corner of blanket she still has.

I can't feel either of my legs. It's more than a little bit of an issue. I try to stretch them and they both come to life with pins and needles, apparently hell bent on making me Cripple Three. It sure feels like I'm headed that way.

The rain appears to have stopped, but now the whole room is filled with a very fine mist, and I can hardly even see through the gaps in the ceiling.

Super grateful right about now for all the randomly placed, artful holes in our arena clothing. That's totally helping right about now.

For all our joking about it, it doesn't appear like anything's crawled out of the bowels of this place and killed us. Blair's so out it almost doesn't look like he's breathing, but that's about as close as it gets.

That still doesn't mean we can take any chances, though. I'm not about to.

I pull my legs up as much as I can and start trying to pull myself free. Blair doesn't move, but Celia starts to shift a bit.

"What are you doing?" she mumbles, without looking up.

"Going for a walk. Don't move, I'm gonna give Blair to you."

She hums something, agreement or not, and I grab Blair's shoulder and gently deposit him back on her once I'm mostly in a crouch, even though I can still hardly feel my legs. At least this way he won't wake up on the floor and be bitter about it later. The room is still quiet, filled with nothing but everyone else's breathing and the very faint patter of water dripping down from the ceiling. I know I'm still tired, but everyone else must be exhausted, if no one else is even moving.

I grab my spear just in case, even though Rooke's nearly rolled over onto it in his sleep, and step back out into the hallway, leaving the door half-open behind me.

My legs burn and prickle the whole way back up the stairs, and the slipperiness of them doesn't help any. I lose count of how many times I stumble and nearly fall back down them. What a surprise that would be for everyone to wake up to. Not exactly a great one, either.

I reach the metal door and set to pushing it open, as slowly as physically possible. You could hear the noise all the way across the clearing yesterday. My goal here is to keep everyone sleeping while I go walking around, not the opposite. I leave it open, too, just in case I feel the sudden urge to come back down here quickly, for whatever reason could possibly exist. In case anyone thinks to come after me, too, but I'm doubting that option more and more by the second.

I don't think it would be a bad thing to be alone for a second, anyway.

The mist is so thick I can't see more than a few feet in front of me, before things start to get blurry. I can see the tops of some of the walls, just starting to poke out as it thins. The sun is just about to come up, if it will at all. It feels like I'm wandering through the middle of some sort of post-apocalyptic world, everything pale and bleary. The dead silence is jarring; it makes me look over my shoulder every two seconds, so convinced that there's something in the woods that I can no longer see.

I feel like this is my job, though. I don't know when it became my job, when I started feeling responsible for eight people instead of one, and then three.

It was supposed to be a joke, all those times Blair called me mom. How much of that is a joke now I'm not so sure.

That's why it's good now, though, to have these moments to myself. Even if they have to come at the crack of dawn, in a place where I can barely see my hands in front of me. The tip of the spear extends forward into the mist, the only reassurance that I have that something isn't going to come charging forward to ruin it all.

Ruin what, I'm not exactly sure. This place is already in shambles as is, and the others are hopefully, safely tucked underground, where nothing's going to touch them.

I know we can't stay here forever. Everyone knows that. At least being here gives me some sort of purpose, walking around and trying to figure out if a perimeter even exists.

A branch cracks behind me, somewhere very far off in the woods no doubt, and I still freeze. The noise sets the blood in my veins alight again, that feeling we all felt so much in the arena coming back to life once again. We really don't know what's out here, and I'm sure as shit not about to go walking into the trees on my own to find out. I'm not Rooke.

I'm not Rooke, but being out here alone finally makes me appreciate just how he survived on his own. I did that for years, back in One, before Kali and before training and before her family, but this is different.

It's uncharted territory. And even if I am leading them, I don't know if I'd survive this on my own.

That thought would scare me, normally. But what could be out there scares me more than that does.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

It takes me a severely long time to realize that anyone's even gone.

I'll blame it on the lack of sleep, or on the fact that I'm semi-warm for once. My whole body has slowed down, and I think that's the first real sign that I'm maybe, almost safe. I'm not starving, I'm not alone, and I'm not two seconds from death. I think, anyway.

Vance has wound up half-crushing my leg, and just because Kelsea's using his doesn't mean I said he could use mine. I'm almost tempted to rip my leg out from under him and see how he likes hitting his head on the floor, but I don't. Instead I grab my own backpack and shove it enough under his head that if he rolls off in any given direction, it should be enough to save him. That's what I'm thinking, anyway.

I'm in the process of wondering how exactly I can make Nadir give me more of what's supposed to be _our_ blanket when I finally notice that Dimara's gone.

I roll over even more onto my stomach, finally managing to dislodge my leg from Vance, who doesn't even notice. She's definitely gone. Judging by the fact that Blair's moved over to sleep on Celia instead, she's probably been gone for longer than a few minutes.

I really don't want to move, but the longer I lay there the more evident it is that she didn't just go wandering off for a bathroom break. Typical Careers and their tendency to wander off, weapons in hand, for one purpose or another. I'm not sure I'll ever understand exactly how their brains work, and I don't think I want to, either. I got enough taste of it with Camden to last a lifetime.

Slowly, I pull myself up off the floor and onto my feet. Everything aches. We're all going to be bruised as all hell from sleeping on the ground for this long, if we ever get the chance to sleep on something else.

"You were keeping my legs warm," Nadir informs me. I have no idea how the corner she's sleeping in is anywhere near comfortable. There's a reason Blair gave it up to sleep on Dimara.

"Cuddle with someone else in this room then," I tell her. "There's six other options."

If her eyes were open, I'm sure she'd be rolling them. Right. Not going to happen, probably not in this century. She'll have to live, then, because I'm not going to be able to go back to sleep when I know I could be wandering around right now, like Dimara's already doing.

Nadir doesn't try to force me back down, doesn't try to get me to stay.

"Be careful," is all she says, and then pulls her knees up to her chest, turning her face back towards the wall.

I appreciate it - her knowing that I can handle myself but caring about my well-being anyway. It's a far cry from the people I spent most of my time in the arena with. Unfortunately for me I think Isi and Shirin, Isi especially, rubbed off on me more than what is probably healthy. Something that I'll just have to apparently deal with, now that I'm going to be alive for the foreseeable future.

The metal door is far above me, but still letting enough light in down the stairs that it's clear Dimara went up rather than down. Thank god. If she had gone further in, I'm not sure I'd be so inclined to follow her. Being down here makes my skin crawl.

There's no telling what direction she went in with all the fog, but I follow what I'm hoping are her footsteps through the slick of mud just outside the door. I draw my jacket tighter around myself and keep one hand against the nearest wall, following it until the next, and continue on my way.

I would have definitely walked into her, had I not stumbled and slipped in a particularly muddy trench, making enough noise to scare off anything in a half mile radius. She whirls around, no more than five or six feet in front of me, but relaxes when she sees me catch myself against the wall, swearing.

"I hate this place," I announce.

"Just be lucky you haven't fallen through a hole yet," she says. "Almost did that a minute ago."

I scared her, coming up behind her like that. It's not hard to see. If only it was even really possible to tell which way was up, in the middle of the mist. She has her spear in hand, slowly looking around. Looking beyond me like she's convinced there's something else.

"Everything alright?" I ask, coming up to her side. For whatever reason, I feel like I should have brought a weapon too. Seeing her with one makes me feel vulnerable.

"I think so."

"That's not the most inspiring word choice I've ever heard."

She purses her lips and looks down at me, apparently satisfied with her searching. Not that I think she was going to see anything in the first place.

"You sure everything's okay?" I ask, because I don't think she knows what to say. We're all on edge, but her especially so. The weight of all of us has begun to hit her, one that I don't think will ever hit me because she's standing between it and us.

She shrugs. "Yeah."

Again, not encouraging. But if Nadir's not going to force me to stay than I can't force Dimara into things she doesn't want either. Her fingers are still flexing on the spear like she's itching to hit something, to kill something. Whether or not that's a by-product of all the training, or if she's really just that nervous, I'm not sure.

"Wanna keep going?"

She hesitates, and then nods. I didn't know that I was really in the mood for a walk, but it's better than sitting around, and it looks like she could use the company. Anything to keep the shadows that we're all so sure we're seeing away. Apparently, animosities aside, we haven't really left the arena at all. The same sort of monsters exist out here anyway, even if we can't see them.

Dimara starts walking before I can say anything, but she stays close enough to my side that I can tell she appreciates it. I don't think being alone is good for any of us right now, no matter what we believe.

"Thanks," she says quietly, a few minutes later, and I smile.

And then nearly walk right into a hole.

I trip right over it and she yanks me back by the arm before I can manage to hit the whole descent. That's just how I need to start my day. You'd think I wasn't listening to her five minutes ago, when she pointed it out in the first place.

Dimara doesn't comment, which seems like it should be a blessed thing, but I can tell she wants to laugh, and that doesn't help at all.

It's fine, though. It's fine. So what, if I want to hit her?

It's better than sulking.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

You'd think the whole lot of us had never seen food in our life.

Even two weeks of being hungry was enough to do us in. The food here sure isn't the greatest I've ever had in my life - most of it's dry, nearly dust, sealed in packets, or preserved in jars, but it's food, and there's a lot of it.

"I'm gonna go get something else," Vance says. "Only so many weird vegetables I can eat in one sitting."

I have half a mind to offer to go for him, because my ankle's all but healed now, but he's gone before I can say otherwise, and the room's not all that far otherwise. Besides, it's not like there's that much to do. I'm sure some of us will wander back off to explore later on in the day, but no one seems to be in a rush about it. Dimara and Tanis are back now, and everyone's too busy eating enough food to go into hibernation immediately after this to care.

"So, what should we do?" Celia asks, voicing exactly what I'm thinking. I wouldn't ask, because it feels too weird to, but I don't think she has any issues with that.

No one seems to have any clue, munching away on even weirder vegetables. I'm not even sure half of this room knows exactly what they're eating.

"Start a fight club," Blair mumbles after a moment.

"No," Dimara says.

" _Yes_ ," Celia insists. "C'mon, that's such a good idea. Four out of nine of us knowing how to fight is not great odds."

"I killed the same amount of people you did," Nadir points out. "And so did Vance."

This is the one thing we really haven't talked about, the one thing that seems too dangerous to bring up. We killed people we hardly knew at all, each other's allies, _friends_. People that should probably stay in the past where we forced them, because who knows what will happen if they wriggle their way back into the present.

And speaking of Vance, he's still gone. The room's not far enough to warrant him being gone this long.

I get to my feet, while Celia points an accusatory finger at Rooke. Probably going on about how he needs lessons more than anyone, although I'm not sure asking someone with an unexplained scythe to get up and fight is the best idea in the world.

Vance is in the hallway, maybe halfway between our door and the storage room, unmoving. He's holding onto another jar of something with one hand and has his sword with the other. He didn't have it with him when he left, so he must have set it down out here last night and forgot about it.

I don't know if he can, is the issue.

"You know what I realized?" he asks, when I'm close enough to hear. "There was no point. If I had just stalled, for _five minutes_ , then she'd be alive right now. She'd be here with us right now. I killed her for no reason at all."

"You didn't do it alone," I say quietly. We both know it doesn't matter.

"I might as well have," he says. "She wouldn't have attacked us in the first place if I hadn't fucking killed Casper, if I had just acted rationally for a second. And I didn't."

I think he heard what Nadir said, and maybe the magnitude of it has hit him for the first time. It was so close, to it being ten of us here instead of nine. Too close.

I put a hand on his arm. "There's no way you could've known."

"I wish I had."

"I know."

I lean forward to wrap my arms around him and he doesn't move, just puts his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. He doesn't want to have his own moment, not like Rooke did. He doesn't want to think about this, but he doesn't have a choice.

It's not going to go away just because he avoids it.

"I'm sorry," I murmur. I'm the lucky one here. I didn't know her, don't know what type of person I'm supposed to be mourning, but Vance does. He knows it too well.

I wish there was a way to make this go away, but there isn't.

He has to find a way to deal with it.

We all do.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

"What would you do if someone tried to punch you right now?" I ask.

Rooke doesn't get up from the floor, nor does it look like he's going to anytime soon.

"Get punched, I assume," he answers. I roll my eyes.

There's no way I'm ever going to get away with actually putting some of them through the motions, not with everyone watching, but Dimara's head is poked out into the hallway, trying to see what the two of them are doing out there, and Rory is trying to catch a glimpse around her legs, so I figure I'm free of harassment for the time being.

"Where'd you even get that thing?" I wonder. The scythe is lying across his lap, sticking out like a sore thumb. I know for a fact it wasn't in the armory, and I don't imagine it got sent to him. Kid from Nine or not, that shit's expensive. No offense meant, but he doesn't look like the type of person it would get sent to.

"The grim reaper," he says casually, and I roll my eyes again.

"Very funny."

"I'm serious," he says. "Did you never see it?"

I blink at him. Nadir leans around Tanis' knees to give him a look, and even Blair cracks one of his eyes open.

"I saw it," Tanis says eventually. "It was weird. Isi almost got dragged off by it like three days in, but it pretty much disappeared the second you went after it."

"Shame," Blair comments, and Rory leans back out of the doorway long enough to give him a look that screams of disapproval. Killjoy. Why do I like him so much, again? It's a mystery to me.

"So you're telling me the actual grim reaper was walking around the place and I never saw it?" I ask. "Bullshit. Where'd you get it from?"

"I already told you," Rooke sighs.

"We were too busy getting the plague to see it," Rory points out, and Blair groans, probably at the memory. He really hasn't been having a great go of it, has he? My arm is nearly healed from where Isi sliced it open, and beside the not very fond memories of the plague, it seems like I'm good to go.

"I'm sorry, the what?" Nadir asks. "You got the plague?"

"Are you insinuating that that was a thing that just happened to some of us and not everyone?" Blair asks. "Now _that's_ bullshit. I want a refund."

"Screw you," Dimara says, eyes still on the hallway. "You didn't have to deal with the acid rain."

"You literally cut off my arm a few days ago."

"Why is that even valid right now?" she responds. "You're alive, aren't you?"

He lets his head hit the wall again, and I fight off the urge to laugh. This literally could not get any more weird. It really couldn't. It's always just things going on around us, out of our control, and we've combated the urge to be scared of it. Now we're talking about it like it's just common, every day things. Like it's all okay.

"Alright, seriously," I tell Rooke. "If I was to punch you—"

"Please don't."

"If I _theoretically_ was to punch you, would you hit me back?"

"No?"

They're all killjoys in some form or other, I'm convinced of it now. That, or on the fast track to getting their ass kicked, out of the arena or not.

"Looks like they're going up," Dimara interrupts, popping her head back in. "Who else is going?"

"Don't have to ask me twice," Tanis says, and practically leaps to her feet. Nadir is quick to follow, and then Rory. Blair closes his eyes and burrows back into the damn corner, and that's about as much as we're going to get. I'm not forcing him to walk around, not the way he is.

"Let's go," I say, and Rooke continues staring up at me. Dimara's lurking in the doorway, probably to make sure I don't punch him, but I wouldn't actually.

Not without any warning, anyway.

He lets me lean down and grab his arm, hauling him to his feet. He doesn't let go of the scythe. Not long ago he'd have probably walked off in the opposite direction if I ever even came within five feet of him, so this isn't too bad. Dead allies aside, of course.

"Outside fight club," Blair says, just loud enough that Rooke hears him clear as day. His eyes widen just before I turn around and drag him out the door.

"We're not actually fighting each other, right?" he asks, and I don't respond. Dimara's got to be rolling her eyes up ahead, but I think staying silent is her way of torturing him. She can't mother him to death all the time. Someone's got to have a bit of fun, if there's nothing else to do.

"Great," he mutters quietly, to the silence of the hallway and the pounding of our feet back up the steps.

It's not like he's got a choice now, though, because I'm not letting go.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

"Wait, are we actually doing this?" Tanis asks. "I'm gonna get my ass handed to me."

"I wish someone had a camera," I say, and she bumps her shoulder into mine.

"Like you won't have the exact same results."

Maybe, maybe not. But I think I have a little bit more experience with getting kicked around than she does. At least if it happens I know how to keep a straight face, to not give the person standing over you an ounce of satisfaction for the things they've done.

Tanis doesn't know how to, but I'm glad she doesn't. No one should really have to.

"I'm gonna go get our weapons," I say. "Make this a bit more fair."

She grins. Everyone's up here, save for Blair, and if I have to watch Rooke wave that scythe around then I'm not doing it unarmed. Vance is very slowly wandering off, looking like he's trying to do it without alerting anyone else, but Kelsea is already creeping after him hesitantly.

I wonder if this group would be more normal, if you took the Games out of the equation.

I feel like it would be weirder.

I head back down the stairs, the sunlight that had warmed me for all of two seconds gone again. You'd think they'd have invested in something warmer, living in the middle of the mountains, but I guess not.

Blair doesn't really seem to care either way. Freezing or not, he seems pretty hell-bent on not moving. He cracks his eyes open when I walk back in, but it's hard to tell if he really cares about what I'm doing or if he's just wondering why he can't get a minute of peace and quiet.

I roll up the knives and grab both of the hatchets, because I know Tanis isn't opposed to it, and even if she grows tired of it maybe Rooke will want something that isn't nearly heavier than he is in his current state.

"Can't believe you're having fight club without me," he says eventually, and I pause at the edge of the door.

"You really wanna fight someone right now?" I ask, and he shrugs. It still looks awkward. Beyond painful. Maybe he's just getting better at hiding it.

"Would be better than sitting here."

"I'm sorry."

He shrugs. "Everyone is."

"Not just about the obvious, you know. About—"

I can't help but trail off. I shouldn't be bringing it up anyway. It's like I thought, he probably doesn't remember saying it anyway. But I do, and I can't get it out of my head. I'm not the only one. Any number of things that could've happened, and I'm not the only one.

It's kind of a relief, to know for sure that I'm not the only one in the world fighting something I shouldn't be.

"About what?" he asks. I really don't have a choice here, do I? I'm the one that threw it back into the world, like I had any right to.

"Back in the hovercraft, when you were still out of it - you said something about your dad."

Up until then he'd been facing the opposite direction, like always, but now his head swivels around lightning fast. I shouldn't have said anything. I'm stupid and should just keep my mouth shut, like Thane always says, because something always gets fucked up when I do.

"Who'd you tell?"

"I didn't tell anyone. Why would I tell anyone?"

So no one else knows, then. Not even Dimara. Having that knowledge to myself is a very weighty and dangerous thing, and he thinks I could do something with it, if I wanted.

"I'm sorry," I repeat. "Because I know you didn't mean to tell me, and because I know exactly what it's like."

"You have no idea what it's like."

"Yeah, _I do_ ," I insist, and decide to throw it all away anyway, sitting down in front of him on the floor. "You're not the only one."

The weapons have all gone clattering to the floor between our legs, and he looks right at me. The defeat on his face isn't just the pain, not just the missing arm. That's what it should be. This is from something both of us know too well, something that never quite leaves.

"So, what," he says. "You also have a special someone that flips you inside out every other day and then murders someone and then gets to spend half his life in prison?"

"Well, you didn't tell me the last thing."

"Great. Awesome."

He looks like he'd roll over and bash his head repeatedly into the floor, if he had the option to. If he thought for a second that I'd help him accomplish it.

I never really told Jericho, he just sort of found out. It's hard to hide it, when someone keeps looking. I've never had to say the words out-loud. I flip my hand over instead, extending my palm towards him, and point to the scar that extends between my thumb and forefinger.

"That's from the end of a broken bottle," I say. "The one and only time he had a weapon. I still don't know what he was aiming for - if it was my face, or what, but I caught it."

Blair stares at it in silence, but I know that looking at a scar won't change it no matter what you do. I've tried.

"He's my - my boyfriend, I guess? I don't know what else to call him. That doesn't even feel right, that's not what I should be calling him, after everything he's done. He just..."

"Won't stop," Blair guesses. "They never stop."

 _Never_ isn't a reassuring thing to hear, when mine's still on-going. His might have ended, but not because he did anything about it.

I wonder what it will take, to finally end it.

"I'm sorry," he says, and if he hears it too often I don't hear it enough. "But when you get back, tell him to fuck off, signed me. Please."

I nod, smiling. "Can do."

I don't know what good it will do, if any at all, but I have to try. This can't go on any longer, because if it does I don't know how much of me will be left on the other side.

It has to end. Something has to give.

And it's not about to be me.

* * *

Think it was probably around this point when I realized just how long this behemoth of a story was going to be, and boy did it deliver in the endgame. Don't even get me started on the planning aspect of it, or the 11k worth of notes I wrote out.

And a giant thank you to anyone that still chooses to review. Long or short it means the world to me.

Until next time.


	36. How To Wear Darkness

Outskirts of District Two; former Sentinel base.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

It's a different kind of pain.

Nothing like I've ever felt before. Not as bad as the fog from before, when it felt like any way could be up, when it felt like I would never come out of it. I don't think anything could as feel as bad as the glass coming out, as the blade digging into the juncture between my shoulder and arm, taking a piece of me off with it.

I also thought, delusionally, that it would end. That these days of pain would open up into something easier, eventually. That's what happens to most people.

I don't think most people were given the burden I was, though, or that most people have emergency amputations in a hovercraft in the middle of the woods. Nothing here is an ideal condition, not getting carried this far or sitting alone in this room, over and over again. I've discovered that moving in certain ways only makes it worse - walking on my own is a no-go, half the time. Doing anything on my own isn't easy.

That's why I told everyone to fuck off. It started happening yesterday, when they left me alone for the first time and went above ground. It comes and goes, seems to fade when other people are around, though I still wonder if it's just a distraction.

I just wish I would fall asleep, but apparently my brain has finally decided I've had enough, and it won't let me.

It feels like the arm's still there, like someone's got a hold on my wrist and is twisting and pulling at my entire arm, until it's about to snap off. Sometimes, if I lower myself close enough to the ground, it'll feel like someone's boot is pressing into it, cutting off all the circulation to my hand. I keep looking down, expecting it to be true. Expecting it to still be there.

It feels like it is, and I don't know how to handle it.

By some miracle the others have vacated the room, but not for long. I hear someone's footsteps approaching from the hallway, and close my eyes. Maybe if I feign sleep long enough they'll go away again, and leave me alone.

"Blair."

Alright, I take that back. I know I'm not doing that great of a job of looking nonplussed, serene, like I'm recovering, and there's no way Rory of all people is going to fall for it. Maybe if it had been someone else, someone who was less inclined to look so closely for fear that they'd have to deal with something they weren't equipped to.

Then again, who is that, anymore? Everyone here has dealt with the type of shit they never expected to.

"Blair," he repeats, and I grimace. "Are you alright?"

"I'll be peachy if you go away," I inform him, and he sighs. I know better than to think his retreating footsteps means he's actually leaving - it's more probable that he's going to get someone who listens to what I say and doesn't really care.

Sure enough, there's more than one set of footsteps that return to the room, but I still don't open my eyes to check.

What's the point? Either way I'm getting harassed, either way I'm being forced to confront something I've been trying to ignore for the past day.

"Blair," Dimara says, and then drops a hand on my knee. It's not forceful at all, but something still twinges on the right side of my body, a burn right through where I know my elbow would be, if it was still there.

"If you're in pain—"

"Been in that pretty consistently," I say, but they know that. It looked up there, though, for a few days. At least I got that.

"I'll grab Celia and we'll go see if there's any medical supplies anywhere," Rory says. "It's worth a shot."

"Not the kind of pain you can stop, unfortunately." Besides, it's not worth it anyway. They haven't found any weapons in this place yet anyway, and it should be full of them. Chances are the Capitol came through here and took everything useful several years ago, just in case. They couldn't just leave it alone, leave it for the people who needed it.

Did they really imagine we'd be out here right now, though? Probably not.

"What are you talking about?" Dimara asks.

"You're going to think I'm insane."

"I already think that. Out with it."

"It, it _hurts._ Like, where my arm was. Sometimes it doesn't feel that bad, but other times it feels like someone's trying to burn it right off. Or like someone's cutting into it. And it's not even there."

There's a reason I didn't want my eyes open for this - she's probably looking at me like I _am_ insane. I wouldn't believe her. I've heard too many things, about phantom pain, and never really believed it until it was happening to me. It didn't seem plausible that something like that could really happen.

"I'm gonna go look," Rory says quickly, and then the two of us are left alone. There's no way this type of thing is fixable, not with our capabilities. Maybe somewhere else - I've heard people talk about it, and the solutions. But nine random kids in the woods don't have the solution for it.

"Maybe I," Dimara starts. "I don't even know. Maybe I shouldn't have done it."

"Like you said. I'm alive. And if you hadn't..."

I probably wouldn't be. We all know it. But right now it doesn't even feel remotely worth it. If I have to keep living with it, it definitely won't be. I don't way to say that to Dimara, because I know for all her joking she feels bad. Worse than anyone else. It's an eye for an eye kinda thing, I guess. I saved her life, arguably, and she saved mine. It's up for debate about whether either of us will still be alive at the end of it, because I don't have enough information to know.

I don't really know anything. Right now, I don't even know if I want to.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

You'd think I'd appreciate being above ground more.

Everyone seems to gravitate back up there, no matter what time of the day it is, and I'm not all that great at making myself follow them. I should. I know that would be the smart thing to do. Being around other people seems to help, once I can calm myself down long enough to realize that they're not going to hurt me, that they're not the enemies. Not anymore, anyway.

I take it wandering the long, black hallways more often than not, though. On my own. Staring down over the railing into the nothingness below it. We haven't been that far down yet. We don't even know where it ends, if it ever does. I don't really think anyone's willing to find out.

I hear the footsteps coming down the stairs, but the others have been coming and going all day. Getting food, or coming back down for something they forgot.

I turn around, and Rory nearly stumbles into me.

"Jesus," he says. "I didn't even see you. It's dark in here."

It is, and I'm used to it, but the sight of him still nearly sets me off. Arguably the least murderous Career in this whole complex and it's terrifying, to be anywhere alone with him. How can I think that, about someone who saved my life? No one else would have known it was me. No one else would have _cared._ I should've died back in the arena, and I would have, if he hadn't come after me.

And I still can't even look him in the eye.

"Have you seen Celia?" he asks, looking around. With this level of darkness, you shouldn't be going anywhere without a flashlight. No chance of seeing anything that could be ahead of you. That's exactly why I'm not carrying one. Better not to see any of it.

"I think she went up with the others."

Weird, because those two always go everywhere together, and everyone knows why. Well, or almost everyone, because I'm still convinced they're keeping it from Dimara for fun and games at this point. Games that won't hurt anyone, this time around.

Rory looks around, scrubbing his hands over his face.

"What?" I ask.

He looks down at me in surprise, and there's no doubt a similar expression clouding my own face. If it was anyone else, the word would have come out automatically. That's just human nature. Wondering what's going on in someone else's head, when it could be so many things. But it's different with him. There's a reason I've taken a wide berth around him every time, why I still have trouble speaking to him.

"You guys found a medical room yesterday, right?" he asks. "And it was empty."

I nod. Empty, just like most of this place. There's a few things worth finding, a few things that were overlooked five years ago, but that's it.

Rory sighs. "Yeah. I figured."

"Is something wrong?"

"Everything's wrong," he says, almost like he hadn't meant to even said it. It has to be something with Blair, at this point, because Vance is getting more and more steady by the day, and Kelsea's walking around fine now. There's only one person who's still in any amount of danger, really, and I'm having trouble looking him in the eyes too, mostly because I don't know if there's a chance that'll be the last time.

"I never said I was sorry, did I?" Rory continues quietly. "You look terrified of me right now."

"I'm not."

I know I could lie through my teeth, most of the time, but not right now. There's no reason for me to be treating him any different than Celia, but with her it was mechanical, years of waiting to kill someone, and with him it wasn't. Everyone in that room saw that arrow waver the way it did.

"I didn't want to," he says. "I didn't. And that may not make sense to you, but I just want you to know that."

I already knew that, but a lot more makes sense now. The way he looks at Celia, and how he only ever did it because it was her life or Parker's. It was never about me. I just happened to be there, had to watch it happen.

And yeah, that's awful. It's never not going to be awful. But I'm starting to understand things, a lot of things. Things that I never thought would make sense to me.

I make myself repeat the words. It was never about hurting me. At the end of the day, when he didn't have to, he _saved_ me.

"It's okay," I say. Not an instant solution by any means, but it's a start. At least I hope so.

The air is stifling, suddenly, but at least this time it's not because he's standing too close, or because I'm afraid one of these seconds is my last.

It's like Tanis - we both grow up in the middle of wide open nothing, except for the fields and the trees. For a while it just felt like the darkness was easier than accepting any sort of light.

"I'm gonna go up," I tell him. "But if I see Celia, I'll let you know."

"Might need to turn on the radio for that."

Right. Again, silence easier than any other noise. I flick the switch back up and the light goes green, a very bright pinpoint in an otherwise very dark world. I start back up the stairs, leaving him somewhere behind me, and for the first time the urge to turn around doesn't rear it's very ugly head. I don't feel like I'm danger, despite the enclosing darkness. It doesn't feel like those shadows left a mark, even though I know they did.

For once, it doesn't matter that they did.

Because starting today, I need to start leaving them behind.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

"You're seriously staying up here?" I yell at Tanis.

She's all the way across the clearing, and doesn't respond except to wave, which I assume is the closest thing to answer I'm going to get. It's starting to get cloudy again, rain gathering at the edge of the sky, and Tanis doesn't seem deterred by it in the slightest.

"Goddamn spider monkey," Nadir comments, and then shoulders past me and Kelsea to head back down the stairs, nearly running into Rooke in the process. It's pretty accurate, if anything. Over there's the only part of the structure that seems intact above the ground - there's a few walls formed together, pieces of the roof that are still hanging on. I guess asking a Seven kid not to climb things is about as easy as herding everyone in here together at once.

"You guys are going back down?" Rooke asks, staring over my shoulder. Unless he's caught sight of where Tanis is, then there's nowhere else to look. I don't think he's a big fan of trees, no matter what his tendencies to wander off say.

"Yeah," Kelsea says. "Why?"

"Well, nevermind then," he responds. "Was gonna come up here with you guys, but I guess not."

"Oh!" Kelsea says. I watch the change of course in her face. "Well, you can help us with something then. If you want."

I narrow my eyes at her. She grabs his arm and swivels him back down the stairs, giving me no choice but to follow. I don't think I'll be up here scaling walls any time soon. That doesn't mean I have any clue what she's talking about, or what she's thinking. Something that I feel like I've been thinking more often than not, lately, but right now I'm finding it difficult to unscramble even my own brain. I'm not about to tackle hers too.

"Vance told me earlier," she starts. "That he's a pretty good artist. So we thought we could go looking for some stuff, maybe? Supplies?"

"We did?" I ask, and she turns around to give me a dirty look. Her and I both know we could spend a hundred years down here and never find anything, because it's not an art supplies store, and I don't remember ever having this conversation to begin with.

Rooke glances at me over his shoulder. I'm more and more convinced that one or both of them is going to take a spill down the stairs by the second.

"We did," I say, only half-confident. "Yeah, we did."

I'm going to get hit for this one later. Kelsea rolls her eyes at me when Rooke turns back around. The one thing I do know is that she's been concerned, too concerned if you ask me. You'd think she's made up of it by this point - concern for me, and for him, for everyone. It's no secret that she's been wondering how Rooke's getting on alone.

We're all kind of paired off, when we want to be. And it's easier to come into a group when you have someone familiar at your side. Rooke has none of that.

I also don't know if forcing him is worth it, either, but Kelsea seems willing to try.

That still doesn't change the fact that there are no art supplies anywhere, not in a hundred mile radius. Unless she plans on me picking up handfuls of mud from outside.

She leads both of us into one of the food storage rooms, her hand still around Rooke's arm. It doesn't look like he's going to bolt, not anymore, but no one's willing to take any chances.

"Can you paint with radishes?" Rooke asks, picking up a jar. Kelsea takes it from him and unscrews the cap, smelling it with a wince.

"What if we need to eat that?" I ask her, and take the jar. The liquid is dyed a faint purple-red, but colored nonetheless. Probably not the worst thing I've ever painted with, to be honest, but I'll attribute that to being friends with Aubrey and Pax and all of their really terrible ideas.

"You could totally paint with radishes," Kelsea decides. "Keep that."

Keep it, and with it the inevitable questions from someone about why I'm carrying a jar of radishes around with me.

At least these two won't. It was Kelsea's weird idea in the first place.

I know it's just her trying though, after yesterday. She hasn't been keen to leave me alone since then, and now that I'm walking with less of a limp and trying to get back on the track to functioning to a normal human being, she's turned her attention to someone else.

Someone who actually needs it, I think. Rooke may be getting better but none of us would really know it, because none of us knew the him from before either.

"Alright, no more food," I say. "Let's go look somewhere else."

I lean forward to grab the _both_ of them, before either one can decide to dig their heels in and say otherwise.

There's so many places in here yet, unexplored. Maybe one of them's holding something, even if it isn't art supplies. Maybe it'll be enough to distract us for the time being, until someone comes up with someone else.

I flick my radio on. "We're going a few floors down. Anyone else wanna come?"

Tanis makes a noise of discontent immediately, muffled from the other end, which I could've guessed. Similar noises from Rory, and then Celia a few moments later, as I hear the noise of the radio crackling to life on her end.

"I'll come," Dimara sighs. "Gonna look for some stuff too."

Whether we find what we're looking for our not, I do think it'll serve some purpose.

Distraction or not, it has to.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

"Hey, idiot," Celia says out of nowhere. "I've been looking for you."

"I've been looking for _you_ ," I sigh.

"Not doing a very good job, then," she points out, and hurries up to my side, wrapping an arm around my waist. I don't even know where I'm going, now that she's here. Up until this point I was just picking random directions and hoping she'd be at the end of them. It didn't help that she'll answer other people on the radio but not me, apparently. Probably just to get under my skin.

"Why were you looking for me?" she asks. It's a little awkward, trying to walk with her so close, but it's not something I'm going to complain about.

"Doesn't matter now," I say. "Haven't found anything anyway. Dimara's looking now too."

She doesn't ask what we were looking for. Probably doesn't need to. Considering most of our priorities have been Blair-related these past few days, it would be more surprising for it to be something else. Eventually I drop my arm down over her shoulders and she squeezes my side, just once.

"So why are you moping?" she asks.

"I am not moping."

"Alright, well, if it's not moping, then why do you have a weird look on your face for no reason?"

"I talked to Rooke. I think it went alright."

She looks up at me. "Yeah?"

I nod. It's not a permanent fix to our problems but it's a start, at least. I never expected something like that to fix itself instantly anyway. Even the pace at which it went seems to be a little fast, but can't that go for just about everything, at this point? Maybe it's the close quarters, or the trauma, or the combined weight of everything hitting us all at once.

"Well," she announces. "Since you so nicely asked me what I was up to—"

"Sorry."

She doesn't even finish the sentence. Her arm tightens around my side again and that's about all the warning I get before she leans towards the wall and grabs the handle of the nearest door, pushing it in with a great creak. She drags me through to the other side, slamming the door shut behind us. It's pitch black, and I blink frantically, stretching out my arms. One hand hits the door and the other nearly brushes up against what should be in the far wall.

"Are we in a closet?" I ask, and she laughs. I can hardly even see her.

"Good detective work."

"There was no one in the hallway. Why did you have to drag me into a closet?"

I feel her shrug, and try my luck, reaching back for the door handle. She's swats my arm down before my fingers even close around it, and I can imagine the face she's making, even if I can't quite make it out.

"You're boring," she says.

"And you're a _demon_ ," I respond. "You can't keep me locked in a closet."

"Because this is totally the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Right."

I feel like that should ruin something, but it doesn't. Not coming from her. She knows everything, knows all the bad parts. At the end of the day I think she's just trying to make it better, trying to make it easier to forget. She said I could go home and I still believe her, foolish as it may be.

She tugs me down a few inches, grumbling about it the whole time under her breath, and then drapes her arms over my shoulders, apparently satisfied. My forehead brushes against hers and then settles there, and she tightens her hands around the back of my neck. It doesn't feel like I'm leaving any time soon. To be honest, it kind of feels like we've stepped into another place.

"I'm pretty content, honestly," she says.

"Still a closet."

Still can't see, either, but the eye roll is all too easy to envision. She leans up and brushes her lips against mine, just for a second, but it still feels just as momentous as the first time, just as absolutely insane.

I still don't know whether this is real. It doesn't feel like it is. If you had told me two weeks ago that'd we'd be here, in this exact moment, I wouldn't have believed it. Not for a second. I wouldn't have put that much hope behind something, not when there was no point. It didn't seem like anything like this was possible, no matter what angle I looked at it from.

"Shut your brain off," she says. "It's loud as shit."

I smile, but the radios at both of our sides crackle to life before I can get a word in edgewise. Celia makes a noise of discontent but lets go of me long enough to grab hers, bringing it up between the two of us.

"Uh, guys?" Tanis says hesitantly.

I don't know what it is, about that voice, but something in my stomach drops. Celia continues staring at it, like she can yank Tanis' next words out with her bare hands, but the silence stretches on and on, until it's almost uncomfortable.

"What?" Celia asks. More silence. I can just barely hear shuffling on the opposite end, very quiet breathing. Someone else repeats it, on another end, and the static crackles very loudly for a moment before Tanis' voice echoes through again, very confused.

"Guys, there are people in the woods?"

* * *

I am so ridiculously out of witty, inspirational, or even remotely cool author's notes at this point. Can't help but wonder what they'll look like at the end of all of this, if they're not already non-existent.

You know what I'm not out of though? Stupid cliffhangers.

Sweet shout-out to everyone and anyone who ever goes back and reviews everything, whether it's five chapters or thirty. You guys are the bomb, not me.

Until next time.


	37. After Death

Outskirts of District Two; former Sentinel base.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

"What?" I ask, at the same time I'm pretty sure everyone else does.

"That's not funny," Nadir says flatly.

"I'm not, _shit,_ I'm not kidding," Tanis says in a rush, voice frantic. "Shit, they actually are coming this way."

Suddenly, there are three sets of very wide eyes staring at both me and the radio in my hand, silence enveloping the hallway. The breaths I'm hearing on the other end are all pressed close to the radio, barely concealed terror in the middle of them all.

"What direction are they coming from?"

"Why the hell would I know that?" Tanis responds, and I can almost hear her frantically pointing off across the clearing. " _That way_. I'm not a compass."

"How many of them?"

"Eight, maybe? Ten? I can't see all of them, that's a generous guess."

That's too many. More than we can handle, if they're here to hurt us, or take us back. Not one person here expected they'd be fighting to the death with someone outside of the Games; we're not ready for this. There's no way. Kelsea is already staring back up the way we came, looking back up the stairs like she's waiting for them to appear.

"Can you get back down here?"

There's a lot of muffled swearing, and then a sound that sounds way too much like her falling off of something.

"I'll try? They're really close to one of the doors - they'll probably see me headed for the other one."

" _Try_ ," I insist. "Celia and Rory, where—"

"We're together," he says. "What do you want us to do?"

Fuck, I don't know. I really don't know. Everyone's acting like I should, too, like I woke up this morning a hundred and fifty percent prepared for this to happen. So much for cool, calm, relaxed old _me,_ who loses it after a few days where things looked like they may not go entirely to shit. The three of them are still looking at me, too, Kelsea darting frantic glances over her shoulder, waiting for an answer. Waiting for me to tell her what to do, just like Vance and Rooke are. I didn't even bring a weapon - Kelsea's got a knife that I'm pretty sure she stole from Rory, and that's _it_.

"Blair?" I ask, trying to think. Silence. He couldn't just stay awake for once, could he? He has to be stuck on his own at the absolute worst time, all because I thought leaving him be for a few hours would be alright.

"I'll go for him," Nadir says. "I'm not that far. Figure out what to do."

That makes it easier. "What does everyone have?"

"The stunning realization that I probably have less than five minutes left to live," Tanis mutters, loud enough that I wouldn't be surprised if she was right. If they don't see her they're going to hear her eventually.

"I've got the crossbow," Celia says, at least a tad more serious. "And Rory's got some of the knives. But besides that..."

Her trailing off puts me back at square one. So that's maybe half a dozen knives and a crossbow. I know Tanis had one of the hatchets up there with her, and Nadir had the rest of their stuff, so chances are she still has it all with her. That'll be good, as close to the surface as she's going. She could grab the rest of our stuff too. That's hoping that she can get to Blair before then and get him towards us before someone else decides to come down.

Tanis' voice is quieter the next time she speaks.

"Two of them are headed for the door on the far side. They don't look like they're from the Capitol?"

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Vance asks, at about the same time I think it. That doesn't rule out that they still could be, but if they're not, then who the hell are they? Random people don't just go wandering around in the woods past the fences, no matter what District you're from.

"Give me that," I instruct Kelsea, and she hands me the knife. "Everyone meet back up in the main area. Bring everything you can. We'll figure out what to do once we're all there."

There's really only two options here. If things go better than planned we can all get back together, and get enough weapons to put up a decent enough fight. But I already suspect it's not going to be that easy, that expected. Regardless of where they're from, not a single person would be able to tell me that they're coming in here unarmed. And if they're walking with the purpose that Tanis is making them sound like they have, then they have reason to believe something's here. That _something_ being us.

If that doesn't happen, then our only hope is to go deeper into this place than any of us ever wanted to go, and hope they don't follow. When you look over that railing in the main area you can't see for more than twenty feet before it's nothing but black. Who knows what's down there. I was hoping I'd never really have to find out.

But it's that, or face whoever's coming down here. And I know what I'd rather deal with.

Hell, right now I'd rather be back in the Games.

"If any one of you goes wandering off, I am not coming to look for you," I hiss, and Rooke nods. He knows I'm talking to him, but this is something I don't even think Rooke wants to face on his own. Not when something's finally coming after us, and he's still the furthest thing from a murderer in here.

"What's the plan if they find us?" Vance asks. Kelsea's all but dragging him up the stairs after her, his pace faster than it would be if he was walking on his own.

"You know what it is," I respond. There's no point in saying it out-loud.

It's probably not right to ask this of them. They're not Careers. They didn't plan on living or dying, not like some of us. But right now, it really doesn't matter what they planned on. What matters is that this could be life or death, and if I have a choice, I know which one I'm making.

I'll hurt them. Kill them, if I can.

I'm not dying today.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

I can't even get down off the roof.

They're still far off enough that if I move they're going to see me instantly, off in the distance. The smallest bit of movement will alert them. It'll be once they're closer that I'll have to get down - enough of the ruins will block me, but it also means I'll have to beat them to the other door.

That, or run off into the woods and leave everyone else here. A prospect that's beginning to look more and more promising by the second.

I'm half tempted to do it. I could probably disappear into the trees faster than any of them, and keep watch. Tell everyone where they're going, without risking myself. Even if they did see me I could probably lose them.

It's not just Nadir I'd feel bad about though. Damn all of them.

I hear the noise of the far door being pulled open - the rest of the broken walls are blocking me from seeing just how many of them are headed down.

"You guys hear that?" I ask.

"Got it. How many?" Dimara asks.

I don't know. I need to know, and so does everyone else.

"Give me a second."

I wiggle down to the opposite edge of the roof, the stone scraping at my hips and knees. At least I have the hatchet. It's not as comforting as it would be normally, but at least it's something. I still can't see from this angle, though.

"Tanis, if it's that hard to see them, just stop," Nadir insists. "Get down here."

"Hold on" I hiss, and poke my head over the top of the wall. It's less intact on this side. I can feel the shift of it underneath me, and some of the rock crumbling and giving way, hitting the grass below me. It's only about a ten foot drop - I've done way worse. Climbing down the safer way will mean less cover, and right now I can't afford that.

I lift myself up quickly and then throw my legs over the side of the wall, falling to the ground in one swift motion. I hit it with a thud, quickly lowering myself into the grass. I'm going to be picking gravel out of my hands for hours, but it doesn't sound like anyone's headed this way.

I rise to my feet and take the hatchet out at the same time, pressing myself up against the wall. If I move along the next two walls I should be able to see the direction they came from clearly. Hopefully some of them are still lurking there.

"Tanis," Nadir repeats, sounding more exasperated.

"Shut it," I whisper. "You're going to give me away."

I see someone off in the distance when I sprint between the gaps of two walls, but don't dare to stop. I round the next corner and can see the sun reflected off the of the metal door.

"Alright, alright," I say quietly. "There's three going in the far door - two girls, one guy. They're all armed but only the one girl has a gun out. There's one off in the trees behind them - I really don't wanna say he looks like he has a sniper but I'm not gonna lie about it."

Someone sucks in a breath in the other end. Note to self: keep my head firmly tucked behind walls where I'm not at risk of a bullet hitting me in the brain.

"What about the other side?"

I can't see it, not even close, but as if on cue there's a resounding creak across the clearing, and I know of other door's been opened as well.

"Nadir, how close are you to Blair?" I ask.

"Not far, don't worry about me. I'll beat them there."

It would be easier to be less worried if she didn't sound so worried herself. Whether that's about me or her own chances I'm not really sure. I can't even really think about it, either. There's no time.

"I'm gonna head that way and see if I can follow them down."

It doesn't even _sound_ like a good idea, but my options are limited. It's that or find a sizeable enough hole in the ground and drop down into the room below. I could possibly find the room we've been staying in and get there even before Nadir does.

Again, or I could just stay here. But I can't leave the eight of them to deal with this.

I turn to head back, and someone's standing ten feet behind me.

All the breath leaves my lungs. His face splits into a grin, stretching from ear to ear. Both of my hands tighten, first around the hatchet and then the radio, and all I can think about is how _young_ he looks. No more than a few years older than me. He doesn't look like someone who's about to drag me kicking and screaming back to the Capitol, but he also doesn't look like anything I ever expected.

"What are you gonna do with that?" he asks, and gestures towards the hatchet.

Anything. Nothing. I don't know what to do.

"Tanis?" someone asks. "What—"

The green light of the radio is still on, and he lunges forward and pulls it out of my hand. It's almost pathetic, how easily he does it. I'm too focused on backing as far away as I can, trying to put the blade between us, and he lifts the radio up to his mouth.

"Sorry, Tanis is otherwise indisposed at the moment," he says, very calm. "She'll get back to you in a bit."

Or never. This is looking a lot less like a capture mission and a lot more like an outright murder one. I don't think I'm gonna be around to get back to them, let alone anyone.

He switches the radio off, and my hopes die with the green light. "So. What have you guys been up to?"

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

The radio goes dead.

I swear, too many words in as many seconds, and hear everyone else spread across the place doing the same. Someone is saying Tanis' name, over and over again like that's all they know how to say.

"Shut up," I say finally, and whoever it was falls silent. I run faster.

I'm going to shove Blair into a corner where no one can find him and then go up there and slit the throat of whoever's voice that was, even if I die two seconds later. It's not rational, it's not smart, and I couldn't care less. It doesn't matter what's smart right now.

I skid around the next corner and all but fling myself through the doorway. I can see the stairs from here, illuminated by the light pouring in from above. Someone's probably down here already, and if they're not, they will be soon.

But I launch myself through the doorway, and Blair's _gone._

"You're fucking kidding me," I mutter, and then wince at the sound of my own voice. I clap a hand over the radio when it crackles next, looking back out into the hallway.

"What?"

"He's gone," I snap. I'm going to go up there, slit that person's throat, and then come back and find Blair and do the exact same thing to him. Now really isn't the time for this.

"What do you mean, he's gone?" Rory asks.

"Literally how else could I word that?"

I shove the radio in my pocket, further muffling the sound, and take a step back out into the hallway. Still no sign of anything. No sign of Blair, either. This time when the shadows in the hallway take me back I have a knife in either hand, looking around cautiously.

There's still the possibility that someone got here before I did. Got to _him_ before I did.

But if they wanted us dead, then Blair would be dead in there. And if someone came for something else, he'd have put up enough of a fight that I'm sure I would've heard it.

I don't get the feeling that he's dead. And for whatever reason, I don't think Tanis is either.

I would know.

Every little noise is putting me on edge now, as I turn the corner and start heading for the stairs that will take me to the main area.

It feels too far; like I'll never get there. I can hear something coming towards me already, footsteps just this side of too heavy. Enough that I hear them coming, and have enough time to bolster the growing fear in me that I'm really not going to be prepared for whatever's there.

Blair pokes his head around the corner and looks me dead in the eye.

"Do you practice being this inconvenient to everyone around you, or does that just come naturally?" I ask, incredulous.

He looks dazed, still in pain, but he raises his eyebrows at me, like he has the right to be confused. He's got the mace in his hand, and there's really nothing else for me to grab, so I walk right at him until he gets the point and backs up around the corner.

"What are you doing?" I hiss. "Can you even walk?"

"Got this far," he points out, and then nearly stumbles into the wall. "I heard something, I'm telling you."

"That may have something to do with the ten odd people in the woods," I force out, and his eyes widen.

"What?"

" _The people in the woods,_ " I repeat. "Why do you have not have the radio?"

He waves the mace wildly for a moment. "I have _one hand._ "

Fair enough, in any normal circumstance, but he also has _pockets_ and no excuse to go wandering off on his own if he really did hear something. What does he think he's going to do? You can't point out the one hand thing and then insist that wandering on your own after creepy noises with your aforementioned one hand is a good idea.

"We need to get back to the main area," I say quietly. "Someone got Tanis, but if we can meet back up—"

"Someone's coming," he interrupts, breath hardly above a whisper, and I freeze. He came from that way. If he didn't see anything then that means that someone was following him the whole way back. Following, and not doing anything. Now that I've frozen I can hear it, just barely. The sound of gentle, faint footsteps. Hardly even touching the ground.

Of course Blair heard it; that's what he's trained to do. So what if he walks around will all the force of an elephant?

As if he can hear my thoughts he takes a few paces away from me, towards the corner he just pointed out, and my feet follow against my own will. This is why people die in books, in horror movies. Because they don't turn tail and run when they know they should.

I can't even speak. Blair nearly loses his balance and stumbles into the junction between all of the hallways, and it's only my hand in the back of his jacket that stops him.

I can't stop him, though. A fact I'm very quickly beginning to come to terms with.

Someone comes around the corner before he gets there, though.

It happens so fast. Whoever it is moves like one of the knives in my hands, in motion and then completely motionless the second after, still as a stone, both hands locked around Blair's lone arm. The mace clatters to the ground between the two of them.

Blair looks startled, even more dazed than before, and half my brain is screaming at me to do _anything_ other than stand here, even if it's just scream at the top of my lungs, but I can't.

I can't move, and I know exactly why.

It's not real. What I'm looking at is a literal figment of my imagination, because there's no way it's happening. There's no explanation - there's no way anyone has one. Not for this.

Blair finally looks up, after what I'm convinced is him having an internal battle about whether or not the pain's enough for him to successfully go under for the tenth time. He looks up, though, at who's holding him, and quickly his face morphs into what I'm sure mine already looks like. Blank, object _shock._ Horror, confusion, any emotion that will work to explain what our brain's obviously can't.

"You know," he says, and the voice shocks me back into the middle of it, "I was really expecting there to be another arm I'd have to grab."

"You're dead," Blair manages, voice and hand shaking alike.

"Thanks," the very much _alive_ Meritt Trevall says, "I hadn't noticed."

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

"Guys," Nadir says, sounding half like she's about to cry and half like she's about to hit something. "We have a problem."

"Define problem," Dimara fires back, and the moment stretches on for longer than I would've liked. The image of Nadir standing there gaping, struggling for words, isn't one I thought I'd ever have. In fact, it's one I'd be content to get rid of effective right now.

"Uh," she manages, and then there's the distinct noise of something else on the other end that isn't _her_.

"Here's how this is gonna go," a voice says, one that isn't Nadir's. One that isn't anyone familiar, and I swallow. "You see someone you don't recognize, don't take a swing. Nobody's here to hurt you, but I'm not responsible if someone whacks you in the back of the head if you try it."

Dimara pulls the radio out of Vance's hands. "And who are you?"

"Judging by the reaction I just got, should probably save it for a face to face."

That's not terrifying in the slightest. It's fine. Everything's fine. We don't know who it is and even Nadir sounded rattled by it. At least Rory and Celia have shown up now, because Tanis is still gone, and who knows what happened there.

"Where's Tanis?" I ask, just loud enough to be heard.

"Don't worry about her. Like I said, you're not in any danger. At least not from us. How many of you are together down there?"

"Six," Rooke says, a second before Dimara slaps a hand over his mouth, like she had been waiting for it.

"Give her the radio back," Dimara says, and it's only a second before I can hear the radio being transferred back. "Do you have Blair?"

"Yeah, I have him alright. Don't think he's going anywhere again."

There's a lot of muttering in the background, and it at least sounds like Nadir is getting angry now. I don't reckon she'll be taking whoever it is down here without Tanis, not any time soon. Hopefully she puts up a fight about it. Even if I was terrified I hope I would too.

Celia swivels around, crossbow clutched in both hands, to the set of legs coming down from the stairs along the opposite side.

"If you shoot me," Tanis starts.

"Oh my god," I breathe, and put both my hands over my face, but not before I register the fact that there are more people coming down the stairs after her. Multiple. Maybe she was closer to the actual number than she believed.

Someone nudges her hard enough that she comes down the last of the stairs a bit faster than she would normally, and as soon as she hits flat ground she turns around to give him the finger, hurrying around the edge of the railing until she's closer to us.

"I have never been so glad to see you guys in my life," she mutters, and circles around Rory until she's mostly out of sight.

The guy who first came down the stairs with her notices the crossbow and halts. After a moment he holds out both his arms, grinning.

"Human target practice. Go."

Definitely the guy over the radio, then. The next person down the stairs elbows him dead center in the middle of the back so hard that he stumbles forward, nearly into the railing.

"Quit it, Fen. Serious time."

"Says you," he complains, and reaches to elbow her back.

I blink at them. They just keep coming, too, half of them armed with more weapons than what's got to be legal and the other half looking almost friendly, which shouldn't be legal either. Not in a situation like this. One of them looks around, clearly counting heads.

"Where are the other two?"

"Mer's got 'em," someone else responds, and that is definitely a sniper rifle. Can we leave now?

"Oh, god," Rooke says. "This is - I'm leaving."

I'm torn between looking at him as he turns around, looking ready to shoulder his way through the group of us, and one of the last people that comes down the stairs. For being told we're not in any danger it feels like we are, now. Much more than we can handle.

I was eight, and my parents were shielding my eyes from the mandatory broadcast after the 155th, but it would be impossible not to recognize him.

"Scaring the kids as always, Luca," the first girl says, and she laughs, like this is normal.

Like the guy who the whole world only knows as _Arker_ isn't standing in front of us, plain as day.

"Oh my god," Rooke chokes out, back to the rest of us. "Am I having a fucking nightmare?"

I think that's the first time I've heard Rooke swear like he actually means it, and it's enough to make me turn around. Nadir's walking in, and she's pushing Blair ahead of her, glancing over her shoulder at—

" _What_?" Celia gets out, where I find I can't. Rooke squeezes his eyes shut and then re-opens them, like he's expecting the scene to have changed. Tanis leans forward and pinches him in the arm, even though he didn't ask. It doesn't do anything to help, not for any of us.

"You know, I've been getting that reaction a lot today," Meritt says, _casually,_ like everyone in this room didn't watch him get incinerated five years ago.

Someone behind us cackles.

Blair looks up and stutters to an uneven halt, and Nadir looks up at the same time, mouth falling open.

" _Seren_?" Blair breathes.

"Does anyone else's head hurt?" Rory says distantly.

It's not a familiar face, not really, but Seren is at least recognizable, at least someone who I know has protected one person in this room at some point. Even if it doesn't make sense that she's here, it's better than nothing. She had stopped at the bottom of the stairs but now she's moving around us all and going right for Blair, eyes wide.

"What the fuck happened?" she asks, and it takes me a moment to realize that not everyone knows. We've all grown so used to the lack of the arm and the injuries and our entire situation that it's a shock, to realize that we're the only ones. To everyone else, this is all new.

"Complications," Blair tries weakly, but his attempt at smiling is poor at best, and when she grabs him he doesn't hesitate to drop his head onto her shoulder, apparently done for the day.

This is worse than what we had. At least before we were learning, we were getting closer. Without even realizing it I've drifted closer to Vance and he squeezes my shoulder. He probably needs it just as much as I do. We've _all_ drifted closer together, unconsciously, looking for safety when everything else around us looks the complete opposite.

I feel safe with them. I really do, even right now.

But looking around, even if we're not in any danger, I have a feeling we're in for it.

And we can't run away now.

* * *

Seren and Meritt really are THAT District pair. Katniss and Peeta who.

That was meant as a joke. Whether it succeeds or not is up for debate.

At this point I'm not sure who I feel worse for: the people who read Mayday and never realized I would do something like this, or the people who never read it at all. Apologies. My attempts at writing out an abbreviated explanation aren't so hot, either. But I can try.

My birthday's this upcoming week, though. This was my present to myself.

No, seriously. How much more self-indulgent can I get with my plot points? Stay tuned to find out.

Until next time.


	38. Don't Let Me Go

Outskirts of District Two; former Sentinel base.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

"I really don't wanna go in there?" I try.

"That's nice," one of them says. Linnet, I'm almost sure, but I've learned so many names in the past ten minutes that I'm sure by the end of the day I'll have forgotten them anyway. They said they had things to tell us, like this is just a regular old storytime, so if I retain anything from these moments I'll be shocked. It's hard to, when I've stared two people in the face today who should both arguably be dead - because I know for sure that I watched one die and shouldn't the other one have carked it by now, with the Capitol hunting him the past five years?

You'd have thought. But apparently what I think really isn't all that valid anymore.

I only know one thing, shoved in somewhere between my initial terror when I turned around and them trying to herd us off into a place where we could actually sit down. But it's that one thing that sticks, where I find nothing else will.

The President's dead, someone had said. The President's dead, the President's dead, the President's _dead._

Maybe we're in less trouble than we thought.

It comes to all of us sitting in front of all of them, trying to calm our racing hearts while trying _not_ to stare at all the weapons, the guns that I'm so sure will go off any second. If they decided they were in the mood to kill us they would. No chance of us surviving it. The only thing convincing me that we're safe at this point is Seren, but if she's walking around with them, then maybe not.

"What do you want to know?" one of them asks. Already forgotten his name.

"We get to ask questions?" Vance wonders, and all of us look around at each other.

"Alright, I'll start," I say nervously. "How the hell are you alive?"

Meritt's still lurking in the doorway, and out of the corner of my eye I keep expecting him to vanish. It's unsettling enough without him being there. It's worse that he is.

"Of all the things, that's what you want to know?"

"Capitol voodoo magic," Arker says, but that's not his name, his name is Luca, and for some reason knowing that makes me deeply uncomfortable, when most of the country doesn't. It feels like something I shouldn't know.

Meritt shrugs, and someone else snorts. "I mean, he's not wrong."

I'm with Rory on this one, for once in my life. My head hurts. Judging by the expressions of everyone else around me they're in the same boat, or at least on their way. The real question is, do I even want to know? He's not denying the fact that he was dead. It's not out of the realm of possibility; the Capitol does all sorts of things no one knows about. With access to what they have, maybe bringing someone back is just another weekend afternoon.

Or maybe it was much, much worse than that. But I'm not about to ask that one.

"Maybe just start from the beginning," Dimara suggests. "Considering Blair hasn't been very helpful in explaining since this all started."

Blair gives her a thumbs up, even though Seren's still holding onto his arm and someone else is examining the stump, which is pretty much the extent of why I'm choosing not to look that way. At least this guy looks like he knows what he's doing, as opposed to Dimara's literal hack job. I'm surprised Blair's even still talking to her, after that.

"I only knew exactly what I told you," he says, and Seren shushes him.

"He's right, though," Luca says. "He only knew the basics, just in case something went wrong. But everything went better than expected. Shocking, considering we knew that it could happen at any second and we'd have to be ready for it. Even more shocking considering we had convinced ourselves that we'd have nine dead bodies instead of you guys."

"So that was the plan?" Celia asks. "Either Blair randomly decides to listen or the Gamemakers kill us all? It was them, right?"

"Their idea, yes. The arena only worked if they were all on-board, but the longer it went on the riskier it grew. Even if you all died, it was still a means to an end. We could still put everything in motion."

"That's nice," Celia deadpans. "Thanks for picking option one, Blair."

He gives another thumbs up. Sitting here now I can't imagine all of us dead, floating bodies in the water or sinking down to the bottom. I don't want to imagine that, but that's what it would've come to. All nine of us dead so they could change things for good. All twenty-four of us, at the end of the day.

"Our job was to get everyone out of the Capitol, and then find you guys," Luca says. "They did the rest. The arena, spending the past few years making sure the Districts would be under control, getting the President out of the picture. They got a hold of us five months after the 155th - when the government realized we were alive. By then they had already brought Meritt back, but it took Cambria another year and a half to get the information. We got him back six months later. That was part of the agreement - the Capitol didn't want us attacking them, so they gave him back to us. That was all Cambria too. She's ballsier than I would've given her credit for."

"Did you not shoot her husband in the head five years ago?" Nadir asks.

"I never said she liked me," he points out. "Funny how things work, isn't it?"

"And so much for not attacking the Capitol," Celia picks up. "How are you all not dead?"

"I mean," Meritt starts, and someone nudges him into the hallway, before he can finish the sentence. Sniper guy, who doesn't look too impressed with him at the current moment. Someone starts up laughing again, and I need to give them credit for laughing in a situation where they shouldn't be laughing at all. Maybe that just is their normal.

"Ignoring him," someone else says. I only know her name is Alessia because she's the one that first started trying to calm us all down. "We had insides on the Capitol for years. We were never in any danger from the Peacekeepers, either. They got control over most of them too, over a year ago. The Districts are all calm right now, for the most part, because of that. Besides the Capitol, things outside of this room right now are looking good."

"And what's going on in the Capitol?"

"It's up to the Vice President to step down and give control of the city to us. He doesn't need to be executed. Enough people have died for this already, we don't need to start racking up the numbers again. Call it a show of good faith."

"Boring," Linnet says.

"But he won't?" I guess, and Alessia looks right at me.

"Not as of yet. Either he's much more resilient than we gave him credit for, or he's got a reason to believe that he's going to win this."

"And what would that reason be?"

"That's the part that we're unsure of," Luca interrupts. "But I've got an idea - and Meritt thinks the same thing. I wish it was more unlikely, but I know for a fact that we weren't the only survivors from the bombs. And when you spend two and a half years in the Capitol, you hear shit. Between the two of us, we're pretty sure we know why Quinn thinks he's safe for the time being. And I don't blame him for thinking it."

Whatever it is, I don't want him to say it. I'd rather live in ignorant bliss for the time being. Luca doesn't sound scared, I'm not sure if he even could if he tried, but he looks worried. Not a thing I thought I'd ever come to associate with him.

This is better than I could have imagined. Nine is okay. My family, my friends, they're all okay.

So what if I'm not, not totally? I'm alive. That's more than most people get to say.

I guess we'll see if it's worth it, or not. Because judging by the sound of his voice, I'm not entirely sure.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

I feel a lot like someone screwed my head on backwards.

At least everyone else looks the same way, so I don't feel that bad about it. I wasn't lying - I knew next to nothing, about all of this. I just had the luck, or whatever you want to call it, to be the one that knew. To be the one to do it.

Most people probably wouldn't consider that luck at all. They'd consider it a misfortune. It kinda feels like one, with someone I don't even know poking around at where my arm used to be.

"I don't even know who you are," I say, and he makes a noise.

"I told you my name five minutes ago." He doesn't even look up from where he's shifting the bandages out of the way, poking and prodding around where I don't want him prodding.

"I was supposed to remember that?"

"Mac."

"Mackenzie," Seren says easily, still holding onto my arm.

" _Mac_ ," he insists, and then pokes his finger into something that actually _hurts._ "It looks like someone took a chainsaw to this."

"Close enough," I mutter. I'm just glad that I at least passed out for some of it, even if it wasn't the whole thing. I still remember it, though, mind fogged over or not. I don't think I'll ever be able to get rid of the memory, as much as I want to. If I could blur out this whole thing I probably would.

"Do you want something?" Mac asks. "Not anything to knock you out, but it should at least help with the pain."

"Do you actually have something?" I ask, probably just this side of too eager. Sue me.

"Not on me, but I can go get something from the car. Karsi might need something for Vance anyway."

All of that jumbles into my head, a mixture of a car and I don't remember exactly who Karsi is either but she's probably the one fiddling with what I've unfortunately learned is the slice from a pair of scissors in Vance's leg. If I could see it from here, it would be appreciated. Looking at anything better than what I've currently going on would help. Seren settles a bit more firmly down by my side once Mac leaves, dwindling the numbers in the room even further. I don't know where everyone else has wandered off to, but I'm not going to complain about it.

"There are cars?" I ask, about the dumbest question I can manage, but it's all my brain can put together.

"Well, we didn't walk here," she says, and I probably should've realized that. "And we aren't going to make you guys walk out of here either."

"You're taking us back," I say quietly, and she nods. Across the room Vance looks up from where he had been telling Karsi something, eyes narrowed. I don't know how much he can hear.

"Can't live in the woods forever."

"You did."

"Four and a half years isn't _forever._ And we weren't in the woods the whole time."

"No, you were just planning all this, I've realized." Admittedly it took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure it out. I should've known that it was more complicated than her just disappearing for all that time; we all should have. And maybe there are people that did, like the President. If she did figure it out it's too late now. For everyone else, too.

She sighs. "We're going to take you back to Six. That's where we've been - that's where we sent the Gamemaking team too. Mac should be able to... I don't know, help, at least, once we're there. There's not anything we can do out here. We've got a whole set up there, though, and he's been taking care of us for years. He can make this easier for you."

Well, it would be nice, I'm not going to lie. Anything to make it easier.

"And you'll take everyone else back home?"

"Yeah. It's where they need to be. The Districts are stable enough to send them back; like Luca said, we've got the majority of the Peacekeepers too. We'll probably split up and stay with you guys for a while, just to make sure. But it should be fine."

"Should be," I murmur, and Vance is still looking at us. He's probably heard enough by now that he's realized home is suddenly a real and distinct possibility. The more time we spent out here the less plausible it seemed. I wouldn't have been surprised to spend the rest of my life out here, if I'm being honest. And I think we could've done it too, the nine of us. It's ridiculous to think about.

"How long has it been?" I ask.

"A week."

"And what about the Vice President?"

"That's not for you to worry about," she says quickly. "It's not. I don't want you thinking about it. You've done more than enough."

It would be easier if I could just stop thinking about it, then. Hopefully whatever drugs he brings back shuts my brain down too, at least for a little while.

"Why me?" I ask finally, and I sound way too _woe is me_ for just a second, but that's not what I mean, and Seren knows it too. There's a lot of things I could ask. More questions about how this all came together, about what happened while we've been out here, surviving on our own. But right now none of that really matters. Not to me.

"You know, I spent six months wondering who would be the better option," she tells me. "Rufus wouldn't even talk to me. I think he had some of the natural suspicion that Cicely had, that something wasn't _right._ For nearly the whole time it was going to be Anya, because I knew Rufus wouldn't hear me out. That, or he'd run to the nearest person available to listen and get me killed. At least with Anya I thought there was a chance."

"So what changed?"

"Someone not named Rufus walked onto the stage, and Cicely took Anya, because even though she was young at least she chose her. And I ended up with _you._ "

The laugh bubbles up before I can stop it, and someone's probably going to think I'm insane, but I can't help it. All because I beat him up there, because Julian nearly had a throwdown with him two rows back long enough to distract him. Because Anya left the train car that day and ten minutes later Seren shattered everything I thought I knew. Because of reasons that aren't really reasons at all, when you look at them the right way.

Seren looks at me. "Yeah, I think you need drugs."

I lean my head back against the wall, swallowing my next laugh, and she squeezes my arm.

"It was worth it," I manage. "It really was."

"Was it?"

It doesn't seem like it, not to someone on the outside looking in. I know what she sees. Someone who she ripped apart by accident because she put the responsibility on their shoulders, someone who's currently half-broken and now laughing about it. There's so many people I could blame for this, her being the first, but I can't do it. She wasn't trying to hurt me.

She was trying to save me.

I nod. "Yeah. It was."

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

The sun is out for once.

It feels ten times easier up here, less crowded, more space to breathe. Only one of them followed me up here, but he's made no effort to talk to me, or get up in my space. Probably for the best, right now.

I only came up here because I watched some of them disappear into the woods and come back with vehicles. More than enough to transport them all here, and maybe us. But I'm not about to get that hope in my head, not before someone tells me otherwise. One of the guys comes back from the car, the one that was looking at Blair, with a bag full of stuff, but he too skirts around me. Not pressing too hard.

I don't know what I'd do if they did.

There's murmuring down the stairs behind me, and the one that followed me up here crosses over to where one of the girls is still digging through the back of one of the cars, talking without me hearing them.

The door creaks again and finally Vance emerges, stepping out into the sunlight.

"You're good?" I ask, a little surprised. I expected them to fuss over him more. He just shrugs, staring out at the cars, and shoves his hands in his pockets. He's still limping, but if he's in any pain, he's not letting it show.

"They're taking Blair out to Six."

"What? When?"

"Now, I think. As soon as they give him something. Probably can't afford to waste any more time out here."

Blair shouldn't have been out here from the get-go, not the way he is, but there wasn't anything we could do about it. So why am I so concerned, now that someone's finally taking him some place safer? Somewhere where he can actually get help?

I know why. It's the same reason why we all instinctively moved closer together when they showed up. Even against all odds we've grown closer when we probably shouldn't have. Having him go off on his own, even if he technically isn't, is against everything we've been doing. I don't think anyone's going to be too eager to let him go. It doesn't help that the rest of the world is still a mystery to us - just because they explained what they could doesn't mean it's any easier, to imagine what it's like now.

"What about us?" I ask.

"They're taking us back home."

The words alone are nearly enough to make me cry, and Vance looks at me.

"Please don't," he says. "If you cry then I'll probably start crying and someone's going to come up here and wonder what the fuck we're doing."

I dig the heels of my hands so hard into my eyes that it hurts, but it's enough to push the feeling back. I know standing here that it's just a matter of time. If Vance is right then Blair will be up here in minutes. Less than that, probably. They'll take him off and then we'll be down to eight, and then be ripped apart entirely. I'll have to exist in a place that isn't this, and it feels like we've spent so much time adjusting to this that anything else will seem too weird to live in.

And to think, that two weeks ago I thought I'd be dead by now.

"You have family? Friends?"

"Family, yeah," he responds. "We'll see if I still have friends."

It's different for me than it is him. I knew what I was getting into - the people I trained with had to envision me as a killer for years, even if it seemed near impossible. But no one he grew up with ever imagined him doing the things he did. I don't know what it's like, to have to get past that.

But he's gotten past it here. We all have, because we didn't really have a choice.

We've all had to be a part of things we didn't want to, and can still call each other friends. It doesn't seem like a weighty enough word, but I don't know what else to call it.

Kelsea's the next one up the stairs, followed closely by Celia and Dimara. It doesn't take long for Rooke to follow, and then Tanis and Nadir. Judging by everyone's face they've heard it too, at least enough to know.

"I'm coming with you guys," Kelsea says, walking up to my side. "They've only got four cars, so they kinda have to split us up the best they can."

I wouldn't say she looks nervous; I just think she doesn't want to leave Vance. It makes sense, even if we don't want to know. They'll get us home faster that way, instead of just driving in circles wondering who to drop where. Some places are closer than others. That's just how it works, even if we don't want it to. At least I have Celia, though. It's different for me. Nobody else has someone to go home _with._

"Gonna be a long fucking car ride," Nadir mutters, staring out at them. "And I'm the one that has to stop in Six to let Blair off before they take me back to Twelve. I'm gonna die in the back of the car."

"No, I am," Blair insists. He's mostly upright as he comes out the door, but I'm attributing that to the fact that Seren's under his arm and is guiding him along. If not for that, I'm sure he'd have stumbled into one of us by now.

"Are you ever going to stop joking about that?" Dimara asks.

" _Nope_ ," he emphasizes. "At least I feel better now."

"Drugs tend to have that effect," Rooke says, but I don't think he has the energy to come up with any sort of witty reply. At least he looks better now, in less pain than before. Anything to keep up with that. It'll probably be much easier to survive a car ride with him if he's content with himself.

"Who's giving me a hug?" he asks instead, apparently completely uncaring of what Rooke just said. If he even heard him.

"I'm not," Tanis says flatly. "I'll give you a fistbump."

"Why do I need to give you a hug?" Nadir continues. "I'm going to be in the _same car as you._ "

No one else is, though, so it's not really a surprise that Dimara steps forward to hug him first, and Celia steps in before she's even fully let go. Tanis does indeed give him a fistbump, and once they've managed to lift him up and wrangle him into the back of the car even Kelsea steps up onto the running boards to lean in and hug him too.

I'll have to go over there eventually. He'll give me shit about if I don't, whenever that would even be. I don't know when I'll next see them, besides Celia.

It's a scarier thought than I imagined it would be.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

The sight of them driving away is oddly terrifying.

It shouldn't be. They're going to help him, and for the time being Nadir's still with them. It's not like anything is going to happen. It doesn't matter whether or not we trust these people, because none of us are anywhere near where Blair's been at for days now. We shouldn't get a say.

That doesn't make it any easier to hug the two of them and then watch the car disappear into the trees a minute later.

Just like that, we're down to seven.

I slip away from the group and find myself headed back down the stairs. It's silent. I know for a fact that there's no one left down here; there's no point. Everything's been packed up, all the weapons and the food, everything we had to call our own the past little while. There's nothing left down here for any of us.

Well, there's one thing. And it almost makes me laugh.

That stupid jar of radishes is still sitting in the corner of the room where I left it, when they forced us all in here to sit down and listen to them. That was the last thing I needed to hold onto during all of that - in fact, I had forgotten about it, up until this moment. When it's this quiet, though, it's easy to remember the little things. And it's _too_ quiet down here. I'm used to hearing the sounds of someone else tromping around or the voices of several people all at once, yelling or complaining or just screwing around in general. The silence is almost alarming. It makes me feel like we're already separated.

I pick up the jar anyway and pop it open. There's no way this is going to stick, or last longer than a few days. This isn't an art supply, no matter what Kelsea says, no matter what Rooke tries to insist.

It'll make me feel better, though, to leave something here. It's not like we'll be back here, probably ever. I won't know if it disappears or not.

I'm halfway through the circle when I hear more footsteps coming down the stairs, surprising me. I'm surprised anyone even noticed I was gone, or maybe they're just thinking the same thing I am. Get five more minutes in here, where we started feeling safe for the first time in a while.

"You can't just put a V on there," Tanis says from the doorway. "What about the rest of us?"

I smile as I finish putting it through the center of the circle. "Can stand for whatever you want."

"Shouldn't say that," she says. "One of us is going to come up with something weird."

Probably. In fact, I'd bet on it.

"Kelsea's looking for you," she says. "Stop screwing around with radishes."

The sound of her headed back up the stair is clear but I still stand there for a second longer, watching it drip down the wall, before I head back out into the hallway and close the door behind me. Who knows, maybe it won't fade. Maybe someone several years from now will end up wandering down here and see it themselves, and wonder what the hell went on here.

Kelsea's holding the door at the top of the stairs open, still, and I watch Tanis step back out onto the grass, quickly following after her. I think now that Nadir's gone she doesn't really know what to do, judging by the look on her face. Kinda like how Rooke's looked this entire time except for now, apparently, where he's leaning up against the little bit of wall that's still holding the door up. For once he doesn't look nervous. It's a nice change.

"Bad time to go missing," he says, and I roll my eyes.

"Got a weird definition of missing," I say, and somehow still managed to be surprised when he steps forward to hug me. It's almost exactly what Nadir said, and I know that Rooke's perfectly aware that the two of us are going together, because home isn't that far off for us.

I think I get it though, the way I'm starting to get a lot of things. And I can't not hug him back either.

"Thanks," he says. "For trying to make this easier."

Trying to make this easier, when I was the one that killed two people where he killed no one. But it's given me something to devote my attention to, when Kelsea's not hovering over _me_ to make sure I'm not two seconds from crying. And sure enough, the second Rooke lets go she's on me, not even giving us enough time to separate. I feel like I've gotten far too many hugs, but I can't complain about it. Not when we both need it.

"This is weird," she mumbles into my shoulder. She's right. It's going to be. We're all going to have to force ourselves back into our normal lives, what we had before.

If all of that even still exists. I wasn't lying, when I said I'd have to see what's still waiting back in Eight for me.

"This isn't it," I tell her. "It's not."

I can't let this be it. I can't let all of these past few days amount to nothing, in the long run. That doesn't feel right. Her arms tighten around my back, hands interlocked, but having a little bit less breath than usual isn't scary, for once.

"It's not," I say, even quieter. "I promise."

* * *

Hopefully this cleared some things up. If not, well. Oops.

Big thank you everyone for 200 reviews, because I didn't say it last week. Seeing that number made me very happy.

Unrelated but just as wild: a few months back I made a very bad decision and started working on an AU that is mainly centered around the 9, most predictably, but that will include a lot of the other deado kids from this story down the line. I posted the prologue on AO3 this past week. If anyone's interested in that at all, feel free to hit me up for a link.

Until next time.


	39. Game Over

District One; Neighborhood of Carleone.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

One is too quiet, and One is never quiet.

I suspect that at least part of our reputation is true. For the most part we're the most luxurious, the ones living the high life, the people that don't sleep. A lot of the people born here are as close to the Capitol as you can come; some of them probably _are_ Capitol, with all the officials that come pouring in and out of here every single day.

But now it's silent. It's also dark as can be. All of the streetlights are out, the windows of the houses just down the road black as the night.

"They know I'm coming, right?" I ask Kane.

"That's what Audrel said, but we didn't give them a specific time. Could be any minute for all they know."

This is home, and it feels dangerous. Less dangerous than leaving Tanis back behind the fence, stuck in a car with Meritt Trevall, of all people, but dangerous all the same. I had to bully her into giving me a hug, bully her into staying put. They'll leave me here, once I'm safe, but they're going to come back eventually. Even One isn't a guaranteed thing right now, and I can certainly feel it.

Suddenly, Kane leaving Meritt in the car makes a lot of sense. If someone saw him everyone in a hundred mile radius would know in the span of an hour.

The house isn't far, but I'm beginning to suspect more and more by the second that I'm going to have to walk right up the front steps and knock myself. Of all the districts, One is probably the least equipped for rebellion. At least Two has it's weapons, and Four was always a little bit more distant than the rest from the beginning. One doesn't know what rebellion even _is._

I guess with me back they're going to learn pretty fast.

"What happens after this?"

"Whatever you want," he says. "Live a normal life. Or don't."

I don't know how to live a normal life after this. The only life I prepared myself to live was that of a victor, because that was the only option. I never accounted for all of this. Obviously no one else did either, but the nine of us are the ones that have to learn to deal with it. I don't know if anyone would call us victors; probably traitors to the Capitol is about more accurate.

"You make that sound a lot easier than it's probably going to be."

"And you're asking the guy who got taken by the Sentinels when he was fourteen about the concept of a normal life. Believe me, I've got no idea."

Well, he doesn't appear to be a highly functioning psychopath, and he's survived this long, so that's probably about the closest he's going to get. If I can manage about half of that I should be alright. Should being the key word there.

He stops at the edge of the road as I take the few steps onto the next one. Another few hundred meters and I'll be able to see the house. Still no sign of anyone, not a sign of life in this whole District. I look over my shoulder and follow his gaze to the drapes swinging shut in the front window of the house on the corner, as the lone lamp silhouetted behind it goes dark. Apparently even at eighty-five years old Ms. Ainsworth has not gotten any less invested in what other people are doing, even if it is the middle of the night. Some things just never change, I guess.

Everyone's going to be looking at me, I realize. It's not just her, and I can't help but wonder how many people are watching me right now. How many of them I can't see.

"Well, at least I know where Meritt got the nosiness from," Kane says, still watching the window.

"It's in the air," I tell him. "Among other weirder things."

His lips quirk up, and he turns around. His expression doesn't change much, save for his eyes narrowing.

"Huh. Guess Audrel wasn't lying."

I turn around just in time for someone to collide with me.

I go stumbling back several paces down the road, nearly falling over. I raise my arms up instinctively, because it takes me not even a second to realize exactly what's happening, a very familiar set of arms looped around my neck.

"Oh god," Kali chokes out. "You're here, you're actually here."

It's an even more familiar choked up, watery voice, and I start laughing. My entire body aches from where she slammed into me, still covered in bumps and bruises, but I lock my arms around her back and hold on as tight as I can. I don't ever want to let go.

"I said I would come back," I manage, with her attempting to squeeze the life out of me.

"I know, I know. I just didn't know if—"

If I actually would. Especially with everything that happened. No doubt Kali was more confident in me coming back, being the only survivor, than what happened. This threw a wrench into things we didn't even know existed. I can only be grateful now that it happened to me and not her, because I don't think I could've been the one watching it. I don't think I could have handled it.

"You're okay?" she asks, and I nod into her shoulder when she finally sets her feet back down on the ground, even though she doesn't let go of me any more than I'm letting go of her. I've been in the same clothes for over two weeks and have blood smudged far too deep under my fingernails and for the first time all of that actually fades away, for a few seconds.

"And my job here is done," Kane says. "We'll be sending someone back here, once we get her back to Seven. It's stable here anyway, you won't need us. Don't do anything stupid until then."

"That's in the air too," I say, and now Kali's laughing. She has no idea, not about any of this, but hearing the sound of her laugh makes everything else going on seem very small. I pull back enough just to look down at her, and even though she's crying and looks exhausted, because I can guarantee she hasn't been sleeping, knowing that I was somewhere on my way here, that sight alone could be enough to light the whole darkened street up.

"Hi," she says simply. "You've got a lot to tell me about."

I cup her face with both hands and she smiles, just before I lean down to kiss her.

It can wait a few minutes. In fact, it can wait much, much longer than that.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

The ocean air, even from a few miles off, is incomparable.

I see Kelsea roll down the window as we get closer, eyes curious. I don't suspect that you see much of the ocean in Ten, even if the two aren't that far apart. The air is so much warmer here than it was in Two. Gentler. Safer.

There's no way it's that easy to tell, because Four's not even in sight yet. The hills are already starting to roll gently towards what I know are the cliffs on the far side, the beaches and docks not far from them. It'll still be a bit before we're anywhere close to the heart of the District, but the thought of it alone is comforting enough for the time being.

There's no telling what we're walking into. Four is wide and vast and getting communications through the entire thing is a near impossible task. I don't even think my family knows just how close I am, or Celia's. Then again, she doesn't care. She's more concerned about getting me back home, as evident by the fact that she won't even consider talking about her own.

She'll have to go back eventually. She can't avoid them forever.

I think she's going to put up one hell of a fight about it, though.

"It's nice," Kelsea says eventually, leaning her head against the side door. "Ten's just really flat."

"Yeah, it's alright," Celia responds, but she's looking too. For all the bravado even she didn't know if she'd really be back here at the end of the day, no matter what she so insistently told me. Growing up in the middle of the scorching sand and the dunes and the high, rocky cliffs make it almost impossible to leave. It's no wonder that we have less volunteers than One or Two - even if you're going to have to work for the rest of your life, at least you have a view.

I can see the fence from here already, the guard tower that lies right along the coast. There are a few Peacekeepers lingering around it, all of whom turn their heads at the sound of the car.

"They're with us," Alessia says. "No one freak. In fact, no one say anything at all."

Celia makes a face, which leads me to believe that getting her to stay silent during this is going to be near impossible.

Can't do any more damage than what's already been done.

The car rolls to a halt not far from the fence and Alessia steps out of the passenger seat. One of the Peacekeeper's hands tightens around the gun in their waistband, and Celia cranks down her own window, leaning half out of it to get a good look. Linnet's still got her hands on the steering wheel but Orick opens both back doors and stands directly behind the car, just watching.

Eventually Alessia waves her hand and Celia pops the door open, hopping out onto the grass below. I follow a bit more gingerly, but nothing happens. Kelsea slides to the edge of the seat behind me.

"Looks like we're walking," Alessia says. "It's only a few miles."

Only a few miles to people who haven't already been walking miles, like we have. At this point I can feel the exhaustion in the center of my bones, and judging by the next face Celia makes she's in agreement with that. I think both of us need a legitimate, long and comfortable sleep that's preferably not on the floor of some abandoned ruins, or on the floor of a hovercraft.

"Like I said, the Peacekeepers are with us. Captain Saylor has been gracious enough to work with us, these past few months."

Great, because the final thing I wanted to add to this day was the Head Peacekeeper of Four herding me around. It doesn't help either that he's looking right at me now, like he has the ability to smell nervousness.

"You know how it goes," he says. "People start whispering about rebellion and Four goes right to shit. Best not to drive a car right in the middle of that and make it even worse."

I nod, where words fail me, and hope that that's good enough. As long as we get home, I don't care what happens in-between. Maybe that's stupid, or selfish, but all I want right now is my front door closed behind me for just one night. A few hours of walking through the dark and we'll be there, and even though I'm exhausted I have a feeling I'll be walking faster than normal.

I turn back and Kelsea's still sitting at the edge of the seat, and when I catch her eyes she smiles, sadly.

"Good luck," she says, but squeezes me back just as tight when I reach for her. Leaving her alone in the car with two of them doesn't feel anywhere near right, but it's not like we really have a choice. She wants to go home just as much as I do.

"You too," I murmur, and step back. I look away when Celia approaches, because I figure she's going to chicken out if I'm staring at her. No way to remain any semblance of cool if I catch her apparently having emotions that don't involve _me._ It's still progress, though, and I hope that Kelsea knows that.

The gate holding the fence close creaks open behind me. Celia steps back up to my side and Kelsea pulls the door shut, just as Orick jumps back in. She waves out the window at the both of us, and I smile. The car rumbles to life and then slowly starts to pull away. Kelsea looks away quickly but I stare for a long time, until it disappears behind a hill and I can no longer see it.

The gate comes to a halt.

"Now or never," Celia says, and reaches over to grab my hand.

We start walking.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

It takes a lot of willpower not to start crying in the back of the car.

It's something I'm starting to get a lot better at controlling, though.

Linnet stays silent in the front seat the entire time, navigating through trees and plains and eventually, over the hours, the hills start getting fewer and further between. I don't know how I can tell that we're getting closer to Ten, but it's like how Rory's face changed the longer we drove, the saltier the air got. It takes me a while to realize that the train tracks are running along our left side, the ground that had been so bumpy before changing into something almost like a road.

It's the middle of the night, but I can already imagine how the sun will rise over the fields in the morning, when we're there.

I'm trying to focus, trying to see if I can recognize anything from when I was looking out of the train, headed in the opposite direction, but it all looks the same. It's weird to know that we could stop the car right now and I could get out, if I really wanted. There's nothing here except for more flat ground, the very occasional scrubby tree in the distance. They talked about expanding Ten for years, as the demand for products grew higher, and I always thought about how cool it would be, to see something beyond the fence.

It's all the same, though. I don't know why I expected it to be any different.

"You can go to sleep if you want," Orick says quietly. "There's a checkpoint about an hour from here, for the supply trains. Someone there is going to let us in. You don't have to be awake."

It's tempting. My eyes have been threatening to droop shut for a while now, but I don't think anybody else would be letting themselves fall asleep in a car with two almost-strangers. Even if Orick has been undeniably nice this whole time, I should still have my guard up. Even if I'm this close to home, I'm still not safe.

That makes it all the more worse when I do, in fact, fall asleep.

It's like I can half hear things, still feel the car rumbling underneath me. The window frame is digging harshly into the side of my cheek. I'm not all there when the car slows down enough to be noticeable, but I can hear a new voice, hear a door opening and closing. Every time I even crack my eyes open my brain convinces them to shut once again.

The terrible sleeping habits of the past few days are finally catching up to me.

I know the car starts back up again; I'm half-awake for that. Out of the corner of my eye I can see buildings forming. We have to be close, then, but neither of them have tried to shake me awake. It can't be that important.

It can't be that much longer, but it feels like it is. The car slows once again, and then stops. There's a few voices outside the car now, but they all sound muffled. Probably because of how tired I am. I crack my eyes open anyway. The sky is more blue than black, now, lightening on the horizon. It must be close to dawn. The train tracks are gone too, replaced by the low sprawling buildings of a ranch to my right, a few cows grazing sporadically in the pastures.

It looks like home.

I'm about to sit up when the door I'm leaning on falls away from behind me.

I yelp, suddenly very awake as I fall back and out of the car. A set of arms hits me in the back, wrapping around me and pulling me entirely out of the car before I can do a single thing otherwise. Panic bubbles through me for a moment, until I catch sight of Orick, who's still smiling. If something was wrong, he wouldn't be sitting there so calmly.

"Fletch, don't drop her," comes Clarissa's voice, something that finally breaks through the exhausted haze I've been in.

"Fletcher?" I burst out. I can't even see my brother's face, with how awkwardly he pulled me out of the car and is still holding me, but I don't even think he cares. I can see Clarissa's face, nearly splitting into a laugh at what must be the bewildered look on my face. Sam is bouncing on his feet next to her, looking like he'd tackle both of us right to the ground to get his turn if Dad wasn't holding his arm to keep him there. It's Mom who's outright sobbing, the sound nearly hysterical even though both of her hands are clapped over her mouth.

"Be careful, her ankle—"

"All better now," I say in a rush. "Put me down, put me down."

The second Fletcher puts me back on the ground Samuel pushes his way in, before Clarissa can even step forward. Both of my arms are instantly pressed to my sides as he jostles me around, squeezing me so tightly it actually hurts. Pain's never felt so good, though.

"I'm good, Mom," I say over his shoulder, because she's still crying, looking like she's never going to stop. Dad wraps an arm around her shoulders, but even his eyes are watering more than I've ever seen them before.

"Sammy, I can't breathe," I inform him.

"Deal with it," he fires back, and then squeezes me again like he's trying to prove a point. If that point is him strangling me to death before I ever set foot back in the house, then he's on the fast track to accomplishing it.

Judging by the looks on all of their faces, I think I'm just gonna have to get used to it. The hovering, the worrying, the hugs. They all just want proof that I'm okay, that I'm alive, that I'm not going anywhere.

And I'm not.

* * *

 **Renatus Quinn, 46 years, Acting President of Panem.**

* * *

They had burned Dominika to ashes five days ago, but she was no phoenix.

She wouldn't rise from this.

They refused to let him in the room, when they found her. Lots of different people had been saying plenty of different things, but the word _poison_ was the only one that ever stuck. He hadn't known, but he had, at the same time. He knew it in the way everyone was suddenly looking at him like he had become the most important person in the world in a matter of seconds.

Because he had.

Her parents were both dead, and she had no siblings. The only family she had was an uncle, and three cousins, none of which had picked up the phone when he had called. They hadn't shown up to the funeral, either, but it hadn't been that big anyway. Most of the people who would have been in attendance fled the city over a week ago, leaving him to figure all of this out on his own.

Half of the presidential staff had been declared missing, probably among the ones who had taken their traitorous selves and fled the city, and most of the other half had resigned. They didn't want to be a part of what they were so sure was going to happen.

The streets had been silent for days. People had barricaded themselves in their homes as most of the Peacekeeper force turned on them from the inside out. Renatus knew that there was an entire brigade waiting half a city block away. For him to surrender, or to fight their way in when he refused. There were less than fify people in the mansion now, and he knew every single one of their names. A few servants, two of the cooks, one of the Gamemakers - the only people that had chosen to remain loyal, when everything fell apart around them.

This is the first time anyone's left him alone in a week, and there's a knock on the door.

He takes a deep breath and reshuffles the papers in his hands. More unconfirmed reports on locations, on who's moving against him and where. Their computer servers had went down two days ago, traced back to somewhere in District Six, but going there would be suicide.

Moving out of this mansion would be suicide, but he didn't have any options left.

"Come in," he says. He hears the door open but not anyone entering.

That's not something he should be getting used to, but here he is. He doesn't have to turn around to know who it is, but he wishes it was anyone else. It has to be a genetic thing; the utter terror that the Trevall siblings are able to inspire in people is not normal in any world. He's the acting President of Panem and can only imagine what kind of things Meritt could be doing out there, has even more difficulty looking Carnelia in the eye now. They're all terrifying, the ones here, but she's the worst. By a very wide margin.

Lucien is their leader but Carnelia is the puppet master, the one pulling the strings of a group of murderers and thieves and con artists.

And these are the people he's trusting to protect him, now.

"How may I help you?" he asks, taking a second to marvel at the steadiness of his own voice.

"We'd like to request permission to be released to District Six."

That's enough to make him turn around, meeting her eyes. She looks very serious, for the words that just came out of her mouth.

"You know as well as I do that all of your enemies are in Six," she continues. "If you dispatch us there, then we can—"

"You can what?" he interrupts. "Kill all of the Gamemakers, all of the Peacekeepers, Luca and his group of vagrants? There are _twelve of you._ And even then we both know eleven is the more accurate number."

He forces himself to stay seated, forces the chair to keep him there, because he's quite close to losing it. All of the fear, and the panic; it's combining together, and threatening to bubble and spill over.

"We're supposed to win your wars for you. We can't do that if you refuse to let us."

War is all they know. They don't care about winning, or losing, or their chances. They just know the fight, and what happens in the middle of it. This is what the Capitol created, all those years ago, and this is what he has to live with now. A group of people so dangerous that he's fearful to let them out, and fearful to keep them close. There's no good option.

"You'll stay here," he decides. "Where you're of use. We've sent scouts to Six - none of them have come back. You won't either, if I let you go."

She's come closer, now, and he holds his breath. Just close enough that she can read the papers in his very rapidly shaking hand. More dead ends, more nothing. The same thing he's been left with since he was the last one standing over the plot of land that is Dominika's final resting place, like he wanted to be there at all.

"You're going to surrender, then," she says. It's not a question.

"Even you can't fight the entire country, Carnelia. That's what will come down on us if I don't. Sometimes I wish you could."

"What do you think will happen to us, then? Or are you just thinking of yourself?"

Of course he's thinking of himself. He has a wife and kids to protect, the rest of his family. He'll have no issue letting Carnelia and the other eleven of them die when they were supposed to die five years ago, like the rest of the Sentinels did. All of this because Dominika had let too many of them live, instead of letting extinction take it's course as it should have. She had finally paid the price for it, and he was on the fast track himself.

He forces his hands flat on the table. "What do _you_ think will happen to us?"

She'll have some clever words for this. They always do. They're different and so similar - twelve differently shaped pieces cut from the same piece of cloth. Twelve monsters taking different forms.

There's a very soft, indistinct _click_ from behind him, and there's a shift in the air as his fingers settle over the paper, as a cool, insistent weight presses against the back of his skull—

"I already know what's going to happen," she says.

She pulls the trigger.

* * *

Player Carnelia has entered the game.

My inability to let go of characters I should have let go of a very long time ago is becoming more and more apparent by the second.

Sentinel blog if anyone does better with visuals is at thesentinelproject . blogspot . ca! Hopefully that makes it a tad easier to know who everyone is and have all the names laid out more conveniently than I currently have them, which is to say, non-existently. I can answer any questions, too, but who knows what kinda questions you could ask at this point.

Until next time.


	40. Truth Seekers

District Four; Easthaven Community.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

Rory's actually nervous.

I can't say anything about it, because I feel like he's starting to spread it to me. Of all the things to be nervous about, and it's him turning us down the street that has to be his. Easthaven's never been the most impressive area, just a small collection of ramshackle houses backed onto the coast, but my house isn't much better. There's only three houses anywhere close, and two of them are dark.

"Remember to breathe," I instruct, and he takes a deep breath, squeezes my hand, and then lets go. I find myself stopping at the edge of the worn dirt road, watching him approach the front door hesitantly.

It may not be impressive, but he thought he would never see it again.

The door comes flying open before his hand even comes into contact with it.

Rory suddenly has an armful of a very lanky and eager girl, who shrieks something that only he understands, because he laughs as his hands come up to hold her against him.

"Come here!" he says, looking through the front door. "I can grab you too."

His brother is the next person down the stairs, his mother waiting in the doorway. She's obviously trying to keep herself composed as Rory leans down to pick him up too, awkwardly holding the both of them up above the ground. It looks like she's going to crack any second, but how could she not, when she's watching her three children all come back together again?

Dorian wiggles free quickly, complaining about being squashed to death, but Lyria holds on for a bit longer. Even when she finally drops to the ground she doesn't let go, and it doesn't really look like Rory has any issues with that.

"Do I get a turn?" his mother finally asks. Even as she steps forward I'm almost certain that Lyria will be right back in, as soon as she's gone. They've got the tall genes just running in this family, but when she holds onto him and he folds himself over her, they both suddenly seem a lot smaller. They've both been struggling. She had to let him go when she knew she probably wouldn't get him back, and he had to go with the same thought lurking in the back of his mind.

I turn away for a moment, because it feels like I shouldn't be looking. This is a completely foreign thing to me - her holding onto her child like she's probably going to have difficulty ever letting go of him again. It's something I'll never get from my own mother. Something I definitely won't get from Malia, not even if hell froze over.

I'm glad he had that, though. This shaped him into the person that he is, and I'm not sure I'd like the person he was, if he was more similar to me.

Self-deprecating, I know.

The Peacekeepers have mostly spread out, but Alessia is watching on with a small smile. I still can't bring myself to turn around.

A gentle hand brushes against my shoulder, and I look back up. It's his mom, now, who's name is stupidly escaping me at the amount. Her eyes are watery, her face slightly flushed, but her hand is soft enough against my shoulder, still standing far enough away that I could take off, if I wanted to.

"Can I hug you?" she asks.

A very little part of my brain melts into complete and utter mush, and I nod anyway. When she hugs me it's very easy, natural, like how a mother should hug her child, like how I'm pretty sure my own has never once hugged me in my entire life.

"Thank you for keeping him safe," she whispers, and I nod again. I don't know if that's the truth, or if it was the other way around.

"Could I stay here for the night?" I ask, and she pulls back. Her eyes are confused, but she doesn't hesitate before she nods herself. I can't imagine going back home, not after seeing this. I don't know if she saw, saw how he let go of my hand just before he went to the door, or if that's just how she is. If they're all like this, I can't even fathom it.

"Come on, then," she offers, and urges me towards the front door. Rory turns back to the two of us, attempting to wrangle Dorian into staying under his one arm, and reaches out for me with the other.

I can't fathom it, but I could find myself getting used to it.

Being in this home feels like being in one for the first time, even though it's drafty and one of the back windows is boarded up and it's hardly bigger than a shoebox. Dorian doesn't last long before he returns to his own room. I figure we've interrupted enough of his sleep, the past few weeks. His mother is not long after that, and she kisses the top of his head before she goes like he's a toddler all over again, squeezes my shoulder. And Lyria tries, she really does. Rory eventually has to force her up and herd her away, eyes half-closed, back to sleep. I sit on the edge of the couch until he comes back and plops himself down next to me.

"You're not going home?"

I shake my head, and he hums. Not going to push it, then, even though I can see it in his eyes. He wants to. He also looks very tired, a lot overwhelmed. I think that applies to both of us.

"You can go to sleep."

"You're sitting where I'm sleeping."

I look down at the couch. "Do you not have a bed?"

"Technically, yeah," he says. "But Lyr's been sharing a room with Dorian since he was born. I told her she could have mine, after—"

After he left. And he wasn't about to ask her to give it back, just because he is. She was probably too tired to fight him on it, too, or she didn't even realize. Even she had probably accepted it, when his mother hadn't. That he wasn't coming back. It wouldn't have made sense for her to stay in the same room, to cram herself into a space that was too small when there were other places to put herself.

"Well," I say slowly. "I'm not sleeping on the floor."

He rolls his eyes. "Of course you're not."

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

When kids are young in Seven they teach them to be afraid of the woods. Which kind of sucks when you're surrounded by them.

They don't want you going out there, not until you're old enough to handle it. Bad things happen out in those woods, if you're not careful enough. That, or if they say it, they hope that maybe they'll never have to step foot out there. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. Enough that there are still a few old, suspicious families out there who still do it, over and over again.

The woods outside of my house look inviting, now.

Wolf Creek's a place people don't go. The river is rushing not far in, and it's dark, impenetrable after the first few hundred yards. That's why the lumber yards are on the opposite side of the square, where the sun shines fully. Where it looks safe.

The area just outside of the window is pitch black. I have to squint just to make out the trees themselves.

Dad finally fell asleep in the armchair by the fireplace, after spending nearly three hours hounding me. Demanding to know everything, asking if I was okay two dozen times over. It had gotten tiring after a while, but I know that he was worried. Like every parent would have the right to be. The Hunger Games were one thing - at least then he knew where I was, or almost certainly what was going to happen to me.

Like I said. Anything can happen in the woods.

I wind up in the kitchen, trying to catch a glimpse of something out the window over the sink, to no avail. I don't even know what I'm looking for, but it just feels like I should be. Maybe that's the paranoia of having to keep watch, wondering when one of my allies is finally going to snap and off me.

Probably. But I don't think Isi is coming to come running out of the forest at me anytime soon.

Even though that's actually, technically possible now. I'm trying not to think about it.

"Are you alright?" Mom asks from the doorway, and it takes everything in me not to jump. And to think I thought she was just going to the bathroom and then back to sleep. She's been trying to act better, more on the calm side, but as more hours go by the less she's trying.

"Yeah. I'm good."

A normal day, and she'd go back to sleep. This isn't a normal day. It hasn't been normal since the minute they dropped me off and the both of them held onto me like they're never letting go again. She continues lurking, though. I can feel her presence a few feet behind me, just watching. Scrutinizing too closely. I thought I had wanted to be alone. Spending that much time around eight other people will do that. I don't really want to be alone, though, but I also don't want her staring like I'll crack eventually. That's the last thing I want. It doesn't make any sense.

"If you want to talk—"

"About what?" I ask. She hasn't moved from the doorway - her hands are folded in front of her, eyes concerned. And I ask again, about what? I'm back, in more pieces than I expected to be. That's good enough.

"Anything," she offers. "Anything that happened, anything you went through. If you need to, I can listen. And I'm sure your father will too."

"There's nothing worth talking about." A really terrible lie. There's eight really important things we should talk about, another group of them spread over the Districts to watch us until things settle down. There's the Capitol and the escape and how I'm grateful that Blair and Celia took care of Isi and Shirin because I never would have wanted to turn around and do it myself. It's how I'm still not sure if Camden got what he deserved even though he was one of the worst people to ever run circles around me, how I still don't know what happened to Tavian because Dimara wouldn't tell me.

About how Zion deserved to die probably less than any of us, but I knew in the moment that we killed him that we were one step closer, and that's all that had mattered.

"You wouldn't get it anyway," I say, and it sounds harsher than I intend. "You really wouldn't. I could go on about it for years and it wouldn't make any sense unless you lived it."

She's trying. She's still an outsider but she's _trying,_ and even though she told me to do whatever I had to I still don't think she's ready to hear it. There's a lot of things she's ready to accept - the moniker of accidental rebel is easier for her to handle than murderer. And I'm both of them.

"I'm gonna go to bed," I say, and brush past her, headed for the stairs. By that I mean I'll probably sit in my bed for hours and stare at the ceiling and wind up listening to her cry because she doesn't know what else to do. She's kept it together a lot better than I expected, so maybe that's where I got it from. Something had to transfer from her to me, and it certainly wasn't her patience.

I suddenly have a lot more time than I expected, but patience is something I'm out of.

Even for the people that love me.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

Even when Mom lets go of me I think I'm still going to feel her.

They were terrified. I get that. Hell, I was terrified. But the constant hand on my back or on my shoulder and now currently on my wrist is getting to be a bit too much. Dad's pacing back and forth behind the couch, watching Hollis and Karsi like either or both of them are about to bite him. Fair, for when your kid who you thought was dead gets dropped off by two random strangers on the front porch. But Karsi's only with me because she needs to watch me, and by association my leg, and Hollis is watching her.

And they're doing a much better job of explaining what I can't.

I knew right away that I wouldn't know what to say, no matter how long I thought it over. They didn't _have_ to come in and explain it to my parents, but they did. They're not bad people.

So what, if they leave out some of the worst details, namely Luca and Meritt? It's better for them not to know.

Everyone else should be home by now, if not close. Nadir had the furthest to go, but it feels like it's been forever since we all split up. Rooke probably wasn't in the car for that much longer after they dropped me here, but that still doesn't change the fact that he's gone and so is everyone else.

"You look like you're going to fall asleep," Hollis interrupts, and Karsi stops talking to look at me. Even my dad stops and looks over the back of the couch, right at me.

Too many eyes at once.

"Can't really focus," I admit. "Sorry."

"That's alright, that's alright," Mom says, and squeezes my hand. "Maybe you should go lay down?"

I'm nodding before she's even finished, and get up from the couch. Anything to get away from the extremely convoluted, re-told story of everything I just had to experience first-hand. For the first time I'm just going to be an actual child and let the adults have a conversation while I preferably ignore and then forget all about it.

"Call us if you need anything," Dad says after me, and I give him a thumbs up before I reach down and grab the backpack lying near the door, turning down the hallway. I haven't been able to let it go, for some reason. I've managed to shove the sword in it enough that it's mostly concealed, as long as someone doesn't look too closely. I don't think either of my parents would appreciate me bringing it in here, and on top if it they'd probably start questioning my sanity. Not exactly a conversation I want to have with them.

The exhaustion really is hitting me hard. I trudge down the hallway and shoulder open the door to my room, quickly shutting it behind me. Now that I'm home, in a familiar space, it's like my body is telling me to finally relax. They had so much trouble confining me in this house before and right now I don't want to leave.

My room is the exact way I left it. Maybe a tad bit dustier. It doesn't look like anyone's been in here since the morning of the reaping. My bed is still unmade, there are still a pair of shoes thrown haphazardly just in front of the closet.

All just waiting for me to come back.

I drop down on the edge of the bed and let the backpack fall between my feet, avoiding the mirror just next to the door. That's not something I'm ready to confront yet either. My head finds a home between my knees, a place I feel like it's been quite a lot lately.

I take my time pulling off my boots, and then the jacket. There's edges of my clothes that are all but stuck to me with dried blood, the fabric only coming free with a few harsh tugs. I need a bath, and preferably a full day of sleep, and then another several days of just not thinking about anything at all, but I don't think it'll be that easy. I can't even force myself up to head for the bathroom.

As per usual, I find myself on the floor. It's basically a second home, after I spent so much time in different places sleeping on it. Under the bed is even dustier than it was before, and there's a sock under the far end that I distinctly don't remember kicking there.

The backpack that I put under there the night before the reaping is still there, though. Thrown to the very furthest corner, where there were zero chances of my parents accidentally stumbling upon it. I didn't even think to hide it better, because I thought I'd be back that afternoon, would sneak out my window again that night to use everything in it. I didn't think I would need to hide it.

It hasn't even been touched.

It takes a moment, but I wiggle the other backpack underneath the edge of the bed as well, and then shove it up against the wall next to the other one. That's where it'll stay, until I'm ready to open it again. Until I'm ready to confront what's in it and accept it.

The floor's digging into every bony part of my body, but it's probably where I'll wind up falling asleep. I'll give my mom a heart attack later when she comes in to check on me, no doubt and finds me here, but I don't think I'm even willing to move to the bed. Why resume something when this seems so much easier, and I've been doing it anyway.

A bath can wait. For now I drag a single pillow off the bed, because that's the only thing I can imagine needing, and it takes me seconds to fall asleep right there.

* * *

 **Resani Vaccaro, 31 years, Former Gamemaker.**

* * *

He's lost track of how much time it's been since he ran for the mansion.

A week, at least. Probably more than that. They haven't let him out of this room since the day he got here. A bedroom, a parlor, a bathroom, a study. It's the same size as his actual apartment, ten times cleaner. He spends most of his time wandering between rooms, wondering when someone will next knock on the door. He sees the same person three times a day, a nearly elderly woman named Duria who delivers him meals and takes his laundry and doesn't really talk to him.

It's never anyone else. He grows more terrified by the day.

Dominika's dead - that much is true. But she's not the only one who can do things for him, who can protect him. Surely there's someone else in this mansion who can do something for him, someone that's still alive.

If there is, they're not showing their faces.

He's a traitor. Not to the country but to the people he called his family, to the people who would have actually protected him. They're all long gone by now, dead or alive. It's not like he would know.

He's sitting in the parlor when it happens. There's just enough sun in the room to confirm that it's probably about noon. There's no clocks in here, no television. Maybe they don't want him to know what's going on outside these walls, and it's not as if he's about to start reading. He's not that bored. Not yet, anyway. The door opens, though. No knock. Duria always knocked.

He stays seated in the chair. He can't see the door from here, but he can hear the footsteps. At least two sets, quicker and lighter than Duria's ever were. Probably not Quinn, then; he wouldn't get that lucky.

"Hello."

He peers around the edge of the chair. There's two women standing just inside the door. The lead one, the one who spoke, is regarding him with cool eyes. He grew up his entire life here, and just by looking at her he knows she's not Capitol. Not even close.

The other one leans back and locks the door. He stands up.

He lets the first one get close, even though his brain is screaming at him not to. A foot away she holds out a hand, and smiles.

"Elesa Stavros," she introduces, and he knows that name, even though he doesn't want to.

He doesn't offer his hand.

"Where's Quinn?" he asks. His voice isn't steady. The one still by the door turns to face him, appraising. Her eyes are giving away nothing, but he thinks he sees her lips quirk up a bit, like she's amused by this. Amused at his terror, when he knows exactly what they are. Who they are.

"Quinn's unavailable at the moment. He sent us to speak to you instead."

"About what?"

"The Gamemakers and the others. They went to Six, correct?"

They know this already. He had told Dominika that a month ago. If she knew then surely Renatus did as well, and if the two of them had the information then it had no doubt trickled down to the people that were protecting them. Against his own best wishes he had given up their location, full well knowing what would happen to them. He had thought they wouldn't get to this point. That's why he had struck the deal, that Cambria and the others wouldn't be harmed. Imprisoned, maybe. Made an example of.

He had no way to tell then if Dominika was lying when she agreed, and he still doesn't.

Finally, he nods. Elesa looks satisfied.

"You're still telling the truth. Why is that?"

"What use would there be, in lying to two Sentinels?"

"You're smart, but not smart enough," Elesa says. "I'm surprised the others didn't come to know of your betrayal sooner. You thought you were the intelligent one. Making deals, ensuring your own safety, ruining theirs. How do you feel now?"

Terrified. In too much danger to keep track of. He came here because he thought Quinn would protect him, but he's not so sure of that anymore.

"What'd you do to Quinn?" he asks instead.

"What did _I_ do to Quinn isn't the right question. What someone _else_ did to him remains to be seen."

He's dead. There's no doubt in Resani's mind. He's been sitting here and going to sleep every night and eating his lunch under Duria's watchful eyes all while Quinn was meeting his maker on the other side of the building.

The chair is still up against the back of his legs, the wall just beyond that. If he's fast enough he'll make it through the next doorway and onto the balcony, but what then? If he jumps off it's a three story fall - he probably wouldn't make it intact. Even if he did, where would he go? They'd find him anywhere in the Capitol. The others won't take him back. The only thing he has going for him is that Cambria would probably kill him quicker than these two will.

"He's going to run," the other one says flatly, a second before he takes off.

He gets three paces to the right before a hand locks around the shirt at the back of his neck and his back hits the wall. A forearm presses over his throat, a knife just under the hinge of his jaw. Elesa is nearly as tall as he is, wolfish smile a mere inch from his face. Her arm isn't pressing nearly hard enough to kill him, but he figures that's the point. He can't breathe anyway.

"Smart," she repeats slowly. " _But not smart enough_."

* * *

Whew, you know it's bad when I'm too lazy to even guilt trip someone into reviewing.

Anyway, welcome to the 40's. Almost kinda wish it ended in them because that would have made writing the damn thing a whole lot easier for me, but I still did it regardless. Hope everyone's doing well.

Until next time.


	41. The First Of Many

District Nine; Irragan Square.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

There are more people out than I thought there would be.

It's hard to hide when you're in a car. Even if we're moving fast enough that people can't really see, there's still that curiosity. I'd be curious too, if I was on the outside. Until now this was just another normal day for Nine. The sun's out and that means the people are too; even if there's not much to tend to in the fields, now that the Capitol's not a factor, people aren't going to just stop moving.

It also means a lot of their focus is going to the car driving through their ranks. That's exactly why I've been stretched out all along the back seat for a while now. No one knows who Fenton is - he can shout out of the driver's side window for people to get out of his way as long as he wants to, with zero repercussions.

Me, not so much. But at least him shouting at random passerby's has stopped him from constantly harassing me.

Even from this angle I see the car squeeze into a smaller space. Some of the back roads, maybe, or even one of the alleyways. Probably safer that way. With Nine's general distaste for Peacekeepers and everything Capitol-related I wouldn't be surprised if they saw the car and assumed the worst, trashed it before we even got to the other side. Not exactly something I need right now.

"Am I still going the right way?" he asks after a moment, looking around. I pull myself up, head half poking up above the window. Even the back roads still have people along them. There are enough shops, enough things going on, that it warrants it.

Even with those people it still doesn't stop me from seeing a select few, though.

"Stop the car," I instruct.

"Excuse me?" Fenton asks. " _Why?"_

"Just stop the car," I repeat, and when his foot doesn't let up off the gas I throw open the door. He lets out an alarmed noise and the car goes screeching to a halt, hard enough that I nearly slam into the back of his seat.

"General rule of thumb is you wait until the vehicle is _stopped_ to get out of it," he informs me, even as I'm already half-tumbling out of the car and into the road. The door remains wide open as everyone in the immediate vicinity turns to look. There's too many people. There's a group of younger teenagers across the way, and one of them is already pointing at me, mouth slightly agape.

Wrong teenagers. Not the ones I care about.

"Rooke?" Clement asks, almost uncertainly. He's sitting on the front steps of the little sweet shop, him and Ellis both. The same one that it seems like we're invading all of the time, because not a single one of us can afford the one in the square. I threw myself out of the car with zero hesitation, but it hits me now. Ellis is the first one to move at all, and he doesn't look nervous. Doesn't look worried.

"Hey, dude," he says, like this is every other morning. Like we're walking to school. "You really look like you could use a shower."

I start laughing.

It feels hysterical. I am hysterical. I must be, because Ellis rolls his eyes before he starts laughing alongside me. He hugs me, probably against his better judgement, because I'm covered in nearly a month's worth of grime and up until this point I've felt so miserable it felt like it would never go away. At some point Clement comes up beside both of us and claps a hand on my shoulder, shaking his head.

"You're unbelievable."

Fenton is apparently satisfied at what's transpired, because he rolls his window up and then reaches into the backseat to slam my door shut. Behind us, the little bell attached to the sweet shop door chimes out, an all too familiar noise.

The shriek that travels across the road is even more familiar.

"Move, Clem move!" Viera insists, at the door and then across the road in no time at all. She's attempting to wiggle between Clement and Ellis, who's still holding onto me, apparently not deterred by that at all. Austin and Anita are still standing frozen on the front steps, watching the exchange in silence.

"I haven't even gotten him yet," Clement informs her, but that's not something I think she's bothered by. When Ellis finally lets go she's the one that replaces him, apparently uncaring for who's gotten a turn and who hasn't. All that really matters is that she hasn't. The third familiar thing in as much time. It's not something I'm going to complain about, when I missed it so much.

"You're gonna strangle him," Ellis insists, and the movement I can feel but not quite see buried in her shoulder is probably her trying to kick out at him, because he leaps away a few paces, back into the road. Austin and Anita have come over now too, but even when Austin smiles I can see that lingering sadness.

A feeling I've come to know too well. I can't really blame him for it.

It's a miracle I haven't started crying yet, or brought up the laughing again. It feels like I should be freaking out, and I think I am, deep down inside, but not the way I thought I would.

Maybe having my friends back is already helping a lot more than I thought I would.

Viera squeezes me and then pulls back, dropping both of her hands on my shoulders. She looks up at me, scrutinizing. I know I'm off, that what she's looking at right now isn't what she knew before. I caught a glimpse of myself earlier, before I got back into the car after we dropped Vance off. The people weren't the only reason I've been content to lay down in the back seat. If I sat up all I had to look at was my own reflection, staring back at me in the rearview mirror. A few weeks, and I look like a different person. Like someone even I don't know anymore.

That's why everyone around us is looking on like we're a spectacle, like there's a god among them now, or a monster, or both.

"Rooky," Viera says sadly, and normally if she called me that someone would be laughing, by now, and I'd stick my fingers in my ears and walk in the opposite direction away from her until she caught up and pulled me back.

I can't manage that right now.

She doesn't know how to make sense of what she's seeing, and she knows that I can't either. That's why she looks as sad as she does.

I'm not the only one who has to re-figure out who I am, anymore. They have to as well.

And who knows if they'll all still be here, once they do.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

I know my brother would never lie to me.

That's why I know looking at him right now that Thane's not around. For whatever reason, he's not here. I thought I could get home safe, shut the front door and never have to deal with it again, but we didn't even make it there. We didn't even make it past the square. We had to go right through it anyway, and everyone was already there, waiting. It looks like almost the entire District.

It feels a little bit like this is a celebration, like a homecoming actually worth participating in.

Dad's got me so tight I can hardly make Jericho out, just behind him. Mom's got a hand on me too, unwilling to let go of me in the busy crowd. It doesn't feel like the goodbyes, though, like I was preparing myself to be ripped away any second.

Jericho shuffles around until he can reach out a hand to clasp my own. _He's not here_ , he mouths. A wave of relief washes over me, a line of tension that wasn't there before suddenly leaves. For whatever reason, Thane has chosen not to show his face at this exact moment. I've been given this reunion as proof that I can actually have something good, and not just more pain.

I keep waiting for his face to appear in the crowd, like a shadow from the arena, like something straight out of nightmares, but it doesn't matter. It's just a lot of unfamiliar faces, mixed in with some of the people I know from school, my neighbors, shopkeepers, and then finally Ashara and Cade. I don't know if they look proud or just relieved, like I already feel. Relieved that something finally worked out the way it's meant to.

Some of the Peacekeepers are trying to get the crowd to disperse, when Dad finally lets go. It doesn't look like anyone's listening.

"Not too shabby," Cade says, upon approach. "Finally topped Ashara for most dramatic win, I'd say."

It's not really a win in the traditional sense, but I guess it's one regardless. Twelve didn't lose both people, like they're so used to. Whoever was still in his life had to deal with losing Jaeden, but not everything's a loss every year.

"Crowd's getting rowdy," Ashara comments. Someone's shouting at the far edge of the square, but I can't really see properly from this angle. What I can see, at least, is the crowd rippling and moving, a rift right through the middle.

Headed directly towards us.

"Bad feeling," Jericho says.

It's a small, rag-tag group of what looks like a few merchants, pale eyes harsh. A few Peacekeepers are trailing along behind them, and while it looked like they had been ready to intervene, now it's just silence. A few people around the fringes have started to disappear back off down the roads, back into the shops.

Suddenly, I agree with Jericho. It's a weird moment.

There's one that's very clearly the head of the group, although he's nowhere near intimidating. He's hardly any taller than me, but he looks angry, and anger's at the forefront of most things in my life, currently. I know what kind of damage it can do.

"Hello," Ashara says, going for cheery and succeeding way too easily, for the looks on all of their faces.

"Tad dramatic, don't you think?" one of them asks. Like I had a choice about how I ended up back here. Like how when I left I knew all of this was going happen. I _wish_.

"Dramatics are usually how people in Twelve wind up dead," the lead one says. His voice is stronger than I would have imagined. "Wouldn't you say, Ashara?"

Everyone knows how history works. Half the District dead from firebombings, most of the merchant class, after the 75th, when Snow found out that the Twelves were planning rebellion only to wind up dead anyway. A riot that killed almost sixty people after the 130th, when Ashara won. No one ended up dead when Cade won save for the people he killed, but I think everyone knows that when girls from Twelve come back, bad things just _happen._

"Dramatics are over," Ashara says. "You can go home now."

People _are_ scared of her. That's just the facts, a tribute to the way she won. But people here are sick and tired of being scared, of wondering when the Capitol will next unleash their wrath when we're struggling so hard already.

I didn't ask for this. For the President to wind up dead, for this entire course of events.

But I'm not about to grovel at the feet of someone who's angry about it.

"If you're trying to start a fight, let it go," I say. "Nothing bad has to happen here. I know what's happened in the past - we all do. But it doesn't have to happen again."

This time has to be different. It has to be. He turns his eyes on me, though, half shielded by my father's arm, and I feel like I shouldn't have spoken. For being a man who probably belongs behind the front counter of a shop, he looks like a lot more than that. He looks like he's _capable_ of a lot more than that, and that's the worst part of it all.

It doesn't take a special individual to make the greatest impact - we're living, breathing proof of that.

And unfortunately for me, I'm one of the only living, breathing people that hasn't vacated the premises when he pulls the gun out.

I'm sure if someone had seen it coming, if someone had seen it at all, then they would have done something to stop it. But there's nothing anyone can do, when in the next two seconds the gun is leveled somewhere between our heads, like he hasn't decided who to pull the trigger on yet. It has to be me. There's no other option. I'm the one who scares him.

There's too many people between us, though. Both of my parents, and Jericho tries it before he gets shoved back again. Cade and Ashara are both in front of them, hands up, wary.

There's half a dozen ways this could go wrong. His hand is very steady.

"You think one of us will be the only one to die for this?" Cade asks. "If you kill a victor—"

"If I kill a victor, what?" he fires back. "The Capitol killed twenty-three of them 85 years ago and never paid the price for it. She won't be the only one that goes this time around. She'll be the first of many. Besides, is she really even a victor? Does she really count?"

I don't think I do. Everyone knows that, no matter what they call me.

"She's my tribute," Cade says. "She got out. She's a victor. Nothing you say right now will change that, just like pulling that trigger won't stop what's already happening. Walk away."

I couldn't get through even if I wanted to. There's so many people determined to protect me, the only person he really wants. He doesn't want to hurt Cade, or Ashara, or anyone else here. Maybe sending us home wasn't the right call. If we were still out in those woods with each other than none of this would be happening, then me or someone in my life wouldn't be in danger right now.

"Walk away," Cade repeats, and the gun goes off.

The few remaining people in the square start screaming, or run before they can get it out. Even some of the companions the man had at his back take off, some with shock in their eyes. Even with the sudden chaos it still doesn't stop my dad from hitting the man square in the chest, the gun skittering off into the now empty dirt to their left. It doesn't stop me from seeing Cade hit the ground right in front of my feet, blood blossoming out from a single point in the middle of his chest. Ashara's yelling something, even as she gets on the ground by his side. Yelling something about getting help.

Jericho takes off. Everyone's doing something, moving around me. Acting like they have a purpose.

I can do nothing but stand there, frozen in place.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

Everything grows to be too much eventually.

I wait for a long while after I hear both of my parents trickle off to bed, sitting in silence. There's only so long I can sit in this house with the two of them staring at me, wondering what to say. There's only so long I can sit in my room accepting that I'm basically on house arrest.

The clock ticks over just past three, and I grab the backpack and open the window.

It's something I've done a hundred times, lower myself down the brick wall and into the street below. I don't even trust the front door right now. Even the slightest noise will have one or both of them awake, worried about what's happening. They don't need that, on top of every other worry.

Thankfully it's just like every other time. There's no one out on the roads, never is. It's dark, dark as the arena and the woods, but for once I don't feel the need to check over my shoulder. We all got over that quickly, because it was just wasting time. There's nothing on these streets that can hurt us, as long as we're quick enough.

It's not like I'm going all that far anyway, just to The Cross, the only place left that I'm convinced the Peacekeepers will leave untouched. It's probably because no one actually lives there. The only people that ever head that way are walking off to work, so early in the morning that half of them don't even spare a glance to the artwork covering the walls of the near-abandoned buildings.

Even if just a few people look up, that's all that matters to us.

You can tell exactly what you're walking into. The colors get brighten, more recent. A bit of life seeps back into the night, in an otherwise quiet and desolate area. Even in the gaps between buildings, so small that you can hardly squeeze through them you can see it, can see the scrawl and slope of artwork that means different things to different eyes. Different angles for different times.

Right at the edge of the last building you can see the final piece, started three days before the reaping. Big enough that we would've had to slope it along to the other wall, the corner breaking it in the middle. Emmett said he _would_ , a few days after the reaping, once things settled back down.

From the looks of it, it hasn't been touched.

The footprints in the dirt could be from anything. The workers that pass through here every day, like I said. There's no other evidence that anyone's even been here, since the day of the reaping.

I don't know why I brought any supplies. I never really thought I'd be doing anything, but that's because I thought it'd be _finished._

It feels like time just sort of stopped, after I left, and it's just now starting back up again.

Having that knowledge is almost as suffocating as being trapped in my room. Things didn't deserve to skid to a halt just because I was gone. Things left unfinished are things that never leave the back of your mind, and I know staring at this wall that it won't.

Just like that last night, maybe I shouldn't have left the house. I can only look at the wall for so long.

I turn to head back, adjusting the straps on my shoulders, and someone rounds the same corner at the same time.

Not just someone. The complete opposite of just someone.

Aubrey stops as if she's walked headlong into a brick wall, her gaze on her shoes one second and staring at me like I'm a ghost the next. Which, okay, probably not all that far off, but still not something very reassuring coming from one of your best friends.

"You didn't finish it," I call, unwilling to take even a single step forward. Her eyes dart between me and the half blank wall.

She smiles, or at least tries to. "I tried. I couldn't."

The slight wobble in her voice is clear even from here, and it's sad how easily I can picture it. Her refusing to finish it, all three of them, because it was my idea in the first place. Any other day and Pax would probably have ruined it, only half of it being an accident, with no shred of remorse.

"Can you come over here?" she asks, voice thicker than before, and even though she told me to move she's the one that starts walking first. I still meet her halfway, and she latches onto me with all the force of someone who's been waiting for it for a very long time, rising up on her toes to yank me down a little ways until she's happy with it. Her arms are squeezing all the breath out of my lungs, the pressure crushing against my back, and I wouldn't change it for the world.

I was so terrified that she'd turn around, that all of them would want nothing to do with me. It's all I've been thinking about. I wouldn't blame them, either. I would just hate myself even more than I already do.

Walking away would make more sense than this does.

"I'm sorry," I manage into her shoulder, feeling the first of the tears form. Aubrey shakes her head frantically and holds on tighter. She should hate me. Everyone should hate me, for killing two people who didn't deserve it when it was them who wanted me around in the first place, for coming back and just re-inserting myself into their lives like I have any right to.

"You're okay," she says. "It's okay. You're okay."

It sounds a little bit closer to the truth than it usually does, coming from her. She lets go of me with one hand to scrub at her face.

"You know, I didn't plan on crying tonight," she informs me. " _Thanks_."

I'm ready to apologize again, before she yanks herself back. It's like a sudden clarity overtakes her, and she looks back at the wall, still holding onto my arm.

"Alright, let's go."

"Go where?"

"To wake Pax up and then we're going to drag Emmett's stupid ass out of bed because he needs to go somewhere other than school during the week. It won't kill him."

I don't know if that's a joke we should be making just yet, but Aubrey's always managed to make things sound so much better than they really are. Even stupid jokes, even bad ideas. Even projects in the middle of nowhere. Still holding onto my arm she sets off to dragging me back down the road. I don't think it really matters what she says. Just moving is enough for now, knowing that things can still be finished.

"No," I agree finally. "It won't.

* * *

 **Lex Morita, 29 years, Former Gamemaker.**

* * *

She always thought it would be fun to see some of the Districts.

Well, maybe not fun, exactly. Interesting. She wasn't under the impression that anything in the Districts was inherently fun, unless you were headed to One for a reason that no one probably knew about.

Since they've been in Six, they haven't really been allowed outside. At all. It's probably for the best. Just because they let nine kids escape this year and maybe possibly ended the Games entirely doesn't change the fact that they've been killing twenty-three kids for years on end now.

And they probably still would be, if it wasn't for Ferrox.

They're in what she's fairly certain is an old, run-down military building. Just some barracks and a kitchen and a bathroom that smells weird 24/7 no matter what you do. If they want outside for any reason they need a Peacekeeper escort, and half the time there's no one here to go get one. Lex isn't about to walk outside and ask the first civilian she sees where one is.

They'd been in the mayor's house, the first little while. But even the mayor doesn't do much more than tolerate their presence.

The Sentinels are protecting them, though. Were. They're all gone, now.

Suddenly they're not the ones that need the most protecting.

Everyone else is asleep save for Cambria, who she can hear rustling through the top bunk across the aisleway. She's been staring at the bed above her for a while now, wondering how the hell Sona can sleep like the literal dead even now. It's enviable.

Eventually she throws the blankets aside and crosses the aisle. Cambria doesn't say anything when she ascends the ladder at the end but she kicks her feet away, making space at the end of the bed. It's not very big.

"What's up?" Cambria asks.

"Nothing. Can't sleep." She crosses her legs and pulls at the blanket until she can drape it across her own legs as well. She's not used to this, but that's not really right of her to say. None of them are. They knew, vaguely, what they'd be getting into if they successfully pulled all of this off.

She just didn't think it would take this long to end.

Cambria's staring at her, or at least she's pretty positive she is. It's too dark for her to tell much.

"Where do you think we'd be, if he was still here?"

Cambria hums. "Asleep, for one. Ready to wake up tomorrow and watch another bullshit interview with whichever one of the nine of them won. Planning for next year."

And the cycle goes on, just like always. Who knows how many years it would have taken for another group to come along, one that wanted to incite rebellion and set the country on fire. They weren't those people either, at the start. Lex doesn't think she is now. She has no desire to watch the world burn, to watch everyone fall with it.

Like she said, she just wants this long-awaited fight to be over. She wants to pick a new home and live a new life and know that she won it for herself.

"One of the Peacekeepers told Cyrus that they got them all home."

"Supposedly."

"Do you think they're safe?"

"As safe as they can be," Cambria replies. "It's not for you to worry about, Lex."

Well, she's worrying about it. What's the point to all of this if all nine of them wind up dead? She'll surely be dead then too. Someone will come after them, and it won't matter who's on the other end of it.

"What about Blair?"

"It's not for you to worry about, Lex," Cambria repeats.

"Did they tell you if he was okay?"

Cambria shrugs. She probably doesn't know. She only saw one glimpse of him herself, when they first brought him in, and it was _bad._ Figures they wouldn't tell them anything else after that. Six is basically a ghost town, now, population Six Capitolites and a few Peacekeepers. It doesn't seem like anyone else is here anymore.

Lex just wants answers. A lot of them, to questions that have been lingering for as long as she can remember and ones that are just starting to form now.

Cambria rolls over onto her side, exposing another few inches of bed that weren't there before.

"Go to sleep."

She could climb back down and go to sleep in her own bed, or go to sleep up here. She's slept in her bed since they got here less than anyone else's. At this point, everyone does it just so she gets a few hours, and isn't a certifiable zombie during the day.

This is rich coming from Cambria, though, who's sleeping less than anyone here.

"Do you think Resani's okay?" she asks quietly, after a minute of silence. Cambria doesn't respond, and she doesn't know why she cares. Cambria was nearly willing to shoot him in the head; Sona has since said that she _would_ have, if someone had let her have the gun. He betrayed them all and she just wants him back, because she saw what losing a piece did to them five years ago. It did _this._

She knows she's not getting a response, though. No matter how long she sits here, it won't come.

With a sigh, she climbs back down the ladder, and goes to sleep in her own bed.

* * *

And welcome to 200k everyone.

And uh, sorry that I'm physically incapable of not hurting or killing people, even after the Games? It's another my bad moment, I swear.

Until next time.


	42. Collateral Damage

District Seven; edges of Wolf Creek.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

I'm surprised my parents are even letting me go anywhere alone.

I get it. Reintegrating into normal society probably wouldn't go so well if they didn't let me out. That, or it was only a matter of time before some concerned neighbor wandered over to make sure they hadn't locked me in the basement. It takes me twenty minutes to convince mom that I'm quite capable of taking a walk on my own, which she already knows, and dad five minutes less than that.

People are staring. I knew they were going to stare. It doesn't really bug me.

What bugs me, honestly, is that people don't really care the way I thought they would. I've seen handfuls of people from school, people who live just down the road. No one says anything. No one approaches, asks how I'm doing.

Apparently, besides my parents, I left the only people willing to ask in the woods outside Two.

People are just starting to move for the day. People headed off to work, others hanging up the washing on the lines next to their houses. It's still a far walk to the square, even further to most of the lumber yards. The trucks are already starting to file in, half-filled with felled trees. Some of the crew will walk, but most of them immediately clamber up and on, not wanting to miss their opportunity.

Maybe a walk isn't exactly what I wanted. To see the District and know that I'm actually back, but Seven's huge. It would take days to see it all again.

The driver won't notice if he has one extra person.

Everyone else sure does, though. As soon as I clamber up and over the back latch everyone sitting anywhere close looks at me immediately, and the few that don't are quickly elbowed or nudged by their companions. It's mostly a lot of middle-aged or older men, a few women. There are a couple younger ones, too, who are surprisingly doing the best at _not_ gawking.

There's not much room left, but the truck slows again. I'm already sitting on the floor, and it feels like everyone's trying to give me a bit of space. There's no choice for the last ones to climb on, though. The only space left is the maybe two or three feet around me.

It's mostly more young ones, though. A few years older than me, maybe, but much like the others they don't tend to look at me as much as the others do. A girl settles for leaning against the railing next to me, and then a younger guy sits down cross-legged just in front of my own legs. Like I said, probably not their first choice, but unless they want to walk, it's their only one.

It's not that hard to ignore them, either. The truck starts up again, going a little too fast for how narrow the road is, and for how many people still _are_ walking alongside it, but that's what Seven is all about. Wake up, get the job done, repeat it the next day. It doesn't really matter what happens in-between.

The forests outside of Two can try, but they're still not home. Not like this is.

It admittedly takes longer than I expected, for the guy to reach out and nudge my leg with his own. The whole time the girl stares at him, expression flat.

"How long have you been back?" the guys asks, when I finally turn to look at him. He retracts his leg very quickly.

"A few days."

"Oh," he says. "That's good."

The truck continues bumping over the road, and we continue staring at each other. What else am I supposed to say? He asked a question, I answered.

The girl smirks.

"Ignore him," she says, and leans even further back against the railing. It looks like she's about to fall right off. "Zeke's a nosy fuck."

"Hey!" he insists. "You can't say you're not curious too, Lyds. No one even knows where they ended up, or how they actually got back. I know it's a bit of a touchy subject, but—"

"I'm right here, you know," I tell him. The rest of the truck is looking at the three of us like we've all simultaneously grown a second head. Some days it kind of feels like that would be easier to accept than the actual truth. Honestly, it would make more sense.

"Right," he says. "So where did you guys end up?"

"I'm not telling you."

It's satisfying, how quickly he starts spluttering, how quickly she falls silent. I don't blame him, or anyone for that matter, for being curious about it. I think I would be too, if it was someone else instead of me. But the fact of the matter is I don't know how much I'm willing to give up, just yet. Even my parents, of all people, have only gotten the barest amount of information, and that's because they've been dragging it out of me. I don't think I'm ready to go telling my story to strangers just because they start asking. Besides, it's not just my story to tell.

"You have to tell someone."

"I don't."

"Not anyone?" he asks, incredulously. "Not even like, a therapist, or something?"

If we're entering _How Not To Have A Conversation 101,_ then Zeke's been attending for years now. The truck is slowing to a stop again, and I look around. We're about at the edge of the square. Nowhere close to the lumber yards, yet.

"Why would I talk to a therapist? Why would I talk to anyone?"

"I just thought—"

Zeke trails off very awkwardly, and then looks up at the girl. She shrugs, a bit helplessly.

"You getting off here, Kershaw, or should I keep driving?" the driver yells back, and I freeze. The girl sighs, the girl Zeke just called _Lyds_ , and then throws both of her legs over the side of the truck, holding on for a moment.

"You know, I didn't really care," Lydia Kershaw says, and if I could kick myself right now I would. "But Evie does, I think. I'm getting over it but she's having a lot more trouble. So if you ever really do want someone to talk to, maybe get a hold of her. I think she'd appreciate it."

She lets go, and hits the ground with a thud. I've never seen her in my life but even with her hair pulled back and a hat shoved over top of it she does actually look like Camden, whether or not I'm willing to admit that out-loud. It's terrible, how quickly I've almost forgotten about him. Admittedly, I've had bigger things to deal with, but a few weeks ago his body got sent back here and they buried him, whatever was left of him. Lydia and his parents and Evie, kind, gentle math whiz Evie had to mourn him while I was off tromping around in the woods with everyone else who had the privilege to survive.

They had to mourn someone who died hating them, and I still don't have it in me to put two and two together. I still don't even have it in me to tell people like that.

I smack a hand over my face. The truck starts up again.

"Whoops," Zeke says, and I sigh.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

"Isn't this nice?" Kali asks.

I do think District One's nice - it's nicer than most places, I know. At least in the busier parts. A lot of tall, shiny buildings and finely dressed people who wear very expensive looking sunglasses so that they can stare without everyone noticing. I wasn't kidding when I said poking into people's businesses was One's thing.

But to get to all of that you have to walk through all of the backwoods mines, and it doesn't matter if you see someone pushing out a cart full of diamonds and minerals or not, there's nothing pretty at all about that.

At least it's not Twelve. I don't envy Nadir for that.

Kali seems to be quite content, though, her hand clutched in mind. The sun's shining and I'm back and that's pretty much all she needs on any given day, to be happy that she woke up that morning. At least that's what she says. I'm still on the track that she needs to be eating and sleeping a healthy amount now that she's not up all night worrying about me, but who knows if she's actually listening.

"Not too shabby," I reply, and she rolls her eyes, stopping me in the middle of the road. She grabs my other hand too, forcing me to look her in the eye.

"Do it with a little bit more enthusiasm."

"Do you not have enough enthusiasm for the both of us?"

"D, c'mon," she complains. "Are you not happy about all of this?"

Of course I'm happy about all of this. There's still all of the other bullshit lingering in the background though, and no one seems to be dealing with it. They said it wasn't our problem, and for once in my life I had enough hope to believe that. But we can't live in limbo forever, waiting for something to happen. Frankly, I don't think I _can_ live in limbo forever. I'll go insane before that.

"This isn't exactly how I imagined it was all gonna go," I explain. "It's kinda hard to live something you never imagined was going to happen. And believe me, I never imagined this. I don't think any of us did - especially you."

 _"Obviously_ ," she says. "But I'll get used to it. After this no one will have to train or fight or die. Valiant said he wants to turn the Academy into housing, or something. I think it'll be nice."

It will be. Hopefully, anyway. A normal life doesn't sound so bad. Especially after what we went through.

"Kinda glad I don't have to volunteer now. You dealt with a bunch of weirdos."

"I think I'm still dealing with one," I insist, and pull my hands out of hers to poke her in the sides. She spins away and a few feet further towards the side of the road, laughing breathlessly.

"Rude," she says, and then turns her head to look down the road, eyes narrowed. "Do you smell smoke?"

I glance down the road. It smells like someone's having one hell of a campfire. A lot like the arena, honestly, when we woke up and smelled the smoke coming from the second tower, just before it fell. Now that we've moved a few paces down the road I can see the plume of smoke, no longer obscured by the buildings rising into the sky. It's a lot bigger than I would've expected, and it's in the opposite direction from the mines.

"That's coming from the Academy," Kali says, voice suddenly very small. Nervous.

I grab her hand again and start pulling her down the road after me.

Something's telling me to go in the opposite direction. To go back home, where I know it's safe. Where I know nothing's happening, because something most definitely is. Kali's right. We've both come this way every day for years on end. I knew from the moment I saw the smoke rising exactly where it was coming up from, but didn't want to say it.

I thought there was a chance it could be something else.

But three blocks up, just around the corner, half of the Academy has already gone up in flames.

There are people everywhere. Some of them are screaming, and the hysteria is building up by the second. As soon as one person stops someone else starts up. Most aren't daring to get to close, but the crowd is impossibly thick just around the edges, and I push the first few people aside, holding onto Kali as tightly as I can imagine. No chance I'm losing her in this.

"There were people still living there, D," she says breathlessly. "I swear—"

If there were people in there, then they better be out by now. If they're not...

There's a wide circle around the front doors, or at least where they used to be. Now they're nothing but a charred pile of twisted metal. The flames have already taken most of the front of the building, and it's moving rapidly back, and no one seems to be doing anything at all. Kali's grabbed someone that's come stumbling out of the crowd, a younger girl covered healthily in soot, but I can't hear a word either of them are saying.

Valiant's standing across the circle, standing closer than anyone else seems to want to. Tilve's just behind him. Both of them are watching in silent horror as the entire thing goes up in flames. A place that was theirs for so many years, a second home to all of the mentors, and now it's close to gone.

Tilve looks at me, finally, and motions somewhere behind me, mouthing something. I turn, trying to figure it out.

Besides Kali, there's no one that should really stick out. But the second I turn around someone looks back at me, at the same time. I've seen him about as much as I had seen Tavian around, before all of this. He's just barely taller, eyes the exact same. Eyes that didn't get to look at me a second before I killed him because he was already unconscious by the time it rolled around.

It's oddly terrifying, to meet the eyes of someone and know that you killed their brother, a few weeks back.

I should look back at Tilve to confirm it, but for some reason I don't have to.

Tavian's brother looked like a lot of things, before, but right now he just looks angry. And I know a hell of a lot about what anger does.

Kali tries to follow me as closely as she can when I start moving through the crowd towards him, but it's hard with so many people. She only catches up to me when I'm a few feet away, and grabs both of my arms before I can get any closer, right in his face.

There's still someone screaming, nearby, but everyone just around us has gone very quiet.

"Say whatever you want," he says. There's no denying it then, it was him. And I can't say I really blame him.

"There were people in there," I force out. Maybe he thought there wasn't, but I know Kali's not a liar. She wouldn't have said it if she didn't know for sure. A building evaporating is one thing. People inside it is another.

"There were people in there every day," he says. "Me. My brother. Look where he ended up for it. Prematurely dead because they wouldn't let their _real_ talent go two years early. They had him marked as dead before you even killed him, and he didn't care. He just kept trying, and trying. He never stopped trying."

That doesn't change the fact that there are probably more people dead, now, and I all I can hear is the fire raging behind me and if Kali didn't have a hold on me right now I'd probably punch him. That, or consider killing him too, because that's one of the only things I know how to do for sure right now, besides put one foot in front of the other.

It's true - Tavian didn't deserve what he got. He didn't deserve me going after him the way I did.

But it's not always about what we deserve.

The fire continues growing taller and taller behind me. Kali's shaking a little. She knows as well as I do that the aftermath of this is going to be ugly, and he looks like he really doesn't care at all. It's not apathy. It can't be. Someone doesn't burn a building to the ground for their dead brother because they don't feel anything.

He's feeling too much. I felt the same thing, right after we got out, but I didn't burn something to the ground to prove that I still could.

I just kept going.

And after this, I don't know if anyone will let him.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

I'm woken up by very distinctive, very demonic screeching.

It would be more alarming if we were say, still out in the woods with only the vaguest idea of where we actually were, but now I'm asleep on the couch. Or at least I was, until it started happening.

It's almost tempting not to turn my face out of the back of the couch, and ignore it until it goes away. I could probably pull it off, if not for the very much lurking, noisy presence that I'm sure is standing in the middle of the room. I know it's not my mom, and I severely doubt it's either of my siblings. I already have a feeling I recognize the voice.

I'm just going to keep my eyes closed.

"Theo!" Costa calls, voice still alarmingly loud. "You owe me twenty bucks!"

"What," I mumble. Celia makes a very irritated noise into my shoulder. The arm I have under her head is completely asleep, but that's what happens when there's only room for one head on a pillow. I never for a second thought or figured she'd be sleeping without something to lay on. It just would've been nice if my arm didn't have to pay the price for it.

"I regret coming back," Celia says, still refusing to look up. I crack my eyes open, because I figure one or both of us will be made to eventually, if we don't comply sooner rather than later. Costa is standing in the middle of my living room, repeatedly pointing what looks like a very accusing finger at the both of us. I get it - Celia's pretty much half on top of me to avoid falling off the couch, but that's the only reason. The only one at all.

"Who's paying who for what?" I ask, and she looks towards me, smiling.

"Theo owes me twenty bucks, because I said—"

"You said that if it happened in the arena I had to pay you," Theo interrupts. "And it _didn't._ So technically, you have to pay me _."_

"That's a bullshit technicality, and you know it."

"No, it's not." That sounds like Ronan's voice, but I can't see him. Is he in my kitchen right now? Even though it appears like she'd been over-ruled, it doesn't look like that's dampened Costa's mood at all. It would be one thing if I knew she was just happy about getting two people back after a fifteen year drought, but I know it's not just that.

"Aren't mentors not supposed to bet on their tributes?" I ask.

"On them dying, yeah. Relationships are fair game."

"That's fucked up," Celia says, loud enough that she'll no longer be able to feign sleep. It's kind of funny, honestly. You think about all the stuff we were going through, and back here things were just continuing on as normal. The three of them got dropped back off here after the Capitol was evacuated and they picked up where they had left off. I'm sure they were worried about us, when they weren't making weird bets, but it's reassuring to know that things can go back to normal, despite all of this.

Celia eventually detaches herself from me and gets up, quickly walking down the adjacent hall. The bathroom door slams shut.

Ronan laughs.

"She can't hide in there forever," Costa laughs, and I'd beg to differ. She'll either stay in there until the three of them are ready to leave, or she'll crawl out the window and take her chances on the street.

"How'd you even get in here?"

"Your mom let us in, obviously. She just went to the square for something. Said she wouldn't be long."

Judging by the silence elsewhere, Lyria and Dorian probably went with her. Coerced or not. It's still pretty early, but she probably wanted us to get some peace and quiet without either of them jumping on us.

Then again, I'm not sure she knew just how loud Costa could be, when she wants to. She probably wouldn't have let her in if she really knew.

"Anyway, can I have a hug?" she asks. "It's nice to finally not be the newest victor."

"You make that sound like a bad thing, considering we're going to be the newest ones until the end of time now."

She shrugs, and then drags me off the couch. "It's not that bad."

Celia's still in the bathroom, and I see her giving it another few minutes before she dares come back out here, especially with Costa still talking, and her manhandling me the way she currently is. Sleeping on me aside, I still don't think she's all that touchy feely with other people.

"Has she gone home yet?" Ronan asks, coming out from the kitchen. He's staring down the hallway, and I shake my head. At least as much as I can holding onto Costa. I can't force her. I'd like to, honestly, but it's not my issue to dig into. Just because she knows all my stupid, personal secrets doesn't mean I get to know all of hers, relationship or not. It'll happen eventually.

I hope.

"Victors can do whatever they want anyway," Ronan continues. "She doesn't have to."

But she will. Because if she hasn't, a few weeks from now, I might wrangle Lyria into dragging her to her own front door with me.

"Ready to live a brand new life?" Costa asks. "Brave new world, and all that shit?"

No. Yes. I just know that I think we deserve it, after this. All of us do. All three of them have been through their own sort of stuff, too. They had to deal with holding onto all of this knowledge and knowing that they were willingly throwing both of us into it anyway. They had to be okay with it, and we had to live with it. Even if some parts of it sucked, I'm ready to get over it. I think it's time for that.

It's about time this world belonged to more than one person.

And I think I'm finally ready for one of those people to be me.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

It takes a few days for Ada and Eliza to finally come around.

The first day or two I just kept telling myself it was because we all live so far apart. The ranches and farms and fields of Ten do a really great job of keeping us fairly separated, when they want to. After that it became a story that I kept repeating to myself. Maybe they didn't know I was back yet. It would be easier to believe if most of my siblings hadn't been walking through the entire District, telling it to anyone who asked. I don't think my parents have been shy about it either.

They're happy. I can't tell them to stop, because they spent so long just waiting to get me back, after they went through all the motions of not even daring to believe it in the first place. For all their kind words and reassurances, they didn't expect me back.

That's just what happens, when you let go of a thirteen year old. They don't come back.

Emotional as Ada and Eliza had been, they had tried to be so confident. For me. They told me that it didn't matter, what happened in there.

Sam convinces them to come around, though, and the entire morning I spend pacing the front hallway, back and forth, over and over again. The entire time Fletcher sits perched on the kitchen counter like some kind of watchful gargoyle. The world didn't just stop because we came back - Mom and Dad both went off to work, and so did Clarissa, but he's still here, for some reason.

I know why he's still here.

"You sure they're coming?" he asks.

"Sam said they were."

Sam says a lot of things, though. He jokes and he laughs and sometimes he says things that don't necessarily turn out to be true. That's just how it is.

Another few minutes of pacing. I'll wear a hole in the floor boards, soon, and there's no victor money to take care of that. No new house or gifts for the District or anything, really, except for me.

I don't think Sam would lie about this, but he also didn't have any confirmation that they would actually show up. They said they would, and that's what he told me. If they don't it's not his fault. Even if I'll want to blame him for getting my hopes up, he doesn't deserve it. I don't think Sam could handle me being angry at him for any amount of time.

The door opens. My heart practically leaps into my throat.

Clarissa steps in and kicks her shoes off before the door even closes behind her. She stops when she notices me, frozen in the middle of the hallway. Fletcher cranes his neck to see, probably wondering why I've stopped.

"Did you see them?" I ask.

"See who?"

I duck under her arm and poke my head out the door. The only person I can see for the next half a mile is Kader Hausler, and he's nearing eighty years old and probably hasn't even noticed I'm back despite the fact that he lives next door. Just some cows and some sheep and a few horses, birds on the horizon. No other people. No sign of my friends.

Clarissa's talking to Fletcher now, no doubt wondering what I'm going on about.

It passed the time they were supposed to be here just over half an hour ago. People are late in Ten all the time, but rarely this late. The fact that we had to schedule a time for them to come over here at all is ridiculous. Most times they walk in just like Clarissa did, and no one thinks anything of it.

"I don't think they're coming, Kels," Clarissa says. Like I hadn't already accepted that.

I close the door, and start heading back to my room.

"I always knew they sucked," Fletcher says, which is another lie in a long string of them. He treated the both of them the same way he did me, two more younger sisters in an already big enough family. And they don't suck. This is a normal reaction, to your friend going off and helping to kill someone. That's apparently just what I get, for coming back and expecting everything to be the way it was before.

That doesn't make it hurt any less, though. I didn't think any less of Blair for killing three people, or of Vance for killing _both_ of his allies. You'd think if anything, one person could be something they could get over. They said it wouldn't matter.

I guess that's the third lie.

* * *

I'll be uploading the next chapter real (and I mean real) early next Friday because I'll be gone camping for the weekend, so there's that. Prayer circle that I don't break another bone and disappear again for eight months.

And you might be getting something else Monday, but. Shh.

Until next time.


	43. Stand Back Up

District Twelve; edges of the Square..

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

Cade dies four hours after the bullet hits him in the chest.

I didn't see any of it happen.

There was a lot of confusion, in those four hours. A lot of terror and anger and hysteria, swirling and passing through every single person it meets. I don't even really remember getting home, but I remember the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place and then the shutters hitting the window frames hard before they settled into place.

Locked up, shut away.

The door didn't open until that four hour mark hit, when Ashara showed up and told us he was dead.

It still doesn't feel like it really happened. Everything seems exactly the same, when I wake up the next morning. The sun still rose and most people went about their day as if they hadn't been witness to it. Twelve wasn't that big - the few people who hadn't been there surely knew, by now. News spreads like wildfire even now, but fire was our thing from the get-go.

I don't feel safe walking around my own District, but that's not going to stop me from doing it.

Not alone, obviously, because no one's going to let me do that. Eventually I manage to coerce Jericho out after me. For someone with so little regard for what does and does not happen he's sobered right now, and no one can fault him for it.

Any people that _are_ out, same as us, do one of two things. They either take a very wide berth, unwilling to get any closer because they know what went down the last time went toe to toe with a victor, or they stare. I don't know which of the two is worse, and like I said, it really doesn't help that Jericho doesn't seem so inclined to laugh it all off. He's just as nervous as I am.

"Do you really think it's safe being out here right now?"

"It's not safe anywhere," I point out.

"Could be. For all you know you were better off staying in the woods."

At least that way no one here would be in danger, it would just be us. And we had gotten used to a healthy dose of danger over all of those days, too. I know that's not what Jericho means. He's grateful that I'm back, he hasn't been secretive about it, but he's got a point. Things probably would be easier, at least for most of us, if we just hadn't came back.

The world still would've turned inside out, but without us I don't know if it would have turned quite as violently.

"I know they arrested the guy, but he wasn't the only one," Jericho says. "He had friends. You can't tell who's thinking it and who's not. Everyone just looks sick."

Sick and tired of being scared, more like. Scared because we're just used to being at the bottom of the food chain and we're always the one that takes the brunt of the fall whenever something bad happens. It's a miracle any parts of Twelve are still standing apart from the streets.

Suddenly I get why Jaeden felt more at home on them than in any house.

It's not just about him, though, as much as a time like this should be. It's about Ashara and her family and Cade's girlfriend who are now hopefully safely locked behind the gates of the Victor's Village. And it's about my family too. Jericho could be right; maybe we should've just stayed in the woods. With the Capitol effectively shut down, my family wasn't in any danger. Not until I got back. Thane's still lurking around here somewhere too, and as odd as it that he hasn't showed his face yet, it'll come to that point eventually. It's all about self-preservation. As soon as he decides it's safe for him to come around, he will. No regard for anyone else.

But when has he ever had any regard for other people?

"There are way more people in the square than I expected," Jericho says, clearly confused. At this point the square is pretty much a designated zone to stay away from. Too many people that wind up congregating there, intentional or not. The rain last night probably washed all the blood out in ten different directions but that doesn't stop the fact that it was there, drying all over the road, for a few days before that.

There's a car on the far side of the people, slowly pushing through the crowd. Some people are brave enough to linger, but most move back, sticking close around the front of the shops, edging closer to the alleyways.

There was a stampede to get away from this place, after Cade. No one's risking that again.

"That's not a Peacekeeper vehicle."

No, it's not. I know exactly what that vehicle looks like, because I got here in one. Only difference is I know the one that brought me here is safely stowed away, and there's no way Audrel's driving it because they've got her set up in the Justice Building, one of the few places in this damned place with an ounce of usable technology.

"Where in the world did all of your instincts of self-preservation go?" Jericho asks, as he tries and fails to grab my arm when I start forward towards it. "You're supposed to be the smart one. Hold on, is that—"

"Sure is," I respond. I can already see that Luca's the one driving, dark as the windows are. I'm pretty sure in the few seconds it takes me to realize Jericho nearly turns around and heads for home.

"I thought you were kidding about that."

"Did I say I was kidding?"

"Well, no. But I felt bad questioning you."

Jericho's probably in for a very rude awakening, then. The car halts, nearly in the middle of the square. I'm maybe ten feet away from it. I'm sure the news has begun to spread by now, about Cade. Is that why he's here? Probably. I can't imagine it's anything else, but I would think that his problems are a lot bigger than just this. Everyone has to start somewhere, but Twelve's a pretty terrible place to start in my eyes.

There's also the things starting to circulate, about what happened in One, and I know longer know what to believe.

The back door opens, and Seren jumps out.

"This place is shittier than I imagined," she says flatly. "No offense."

"None taken," I respond. It's not a lie. Especially with everything that's happened recently.

Jericho still looks like he's torn, about running off on me. With our current situation, I don't think I'd blame him. It's kind of like the look on Rooke's face, when he didn't know whether looking at Luca or Meritt was worse. He's seeing all of this for the first time, unlike me.

Seren alone might be enough to scare some people off, but Luca takes the rest as soon as he pops the door open.

They're not the ones to be scared of. No point in being scared of the people death follows, if death's already here.

"Nadir?" Jericho asks quietly, voice even more confused than before. I'm still watching the two of them look around. There's still a few resilient, brave people lurking at the edge of the square. Looking out the windows of the shops, or the apartments above. A few curious and scraggly kids poking their heads out of the nearest alleyway. Not enough to do any damage.

Jericho pinches me in the arm.

"Jesus, what?"

"I thought you said he had one arm."

I blink, and look up at him. He's staring towards the opposite side of the car, which I can't see because he's mostly blocking my field of view. I shove him in the ribs and he moves to the side a few inches. Not really that much, but enough that it allows me to see the third open door that I hadn't seen before. I freeze.

Never did I think that the sight of Blair would be more surprising than Seren or Luca, but here I am, living that moment right now. And Jericho's _right._ I stared at an empty coat sleeve for nearly two weeks but it's not empty right now. It feels a lot like I'm hallucinating, even as he props _both_ arms right at the edge of the hood and leans forward, looking around as well. There's a flash of metal, reflected silver in the sunlight, at the curl of his hand. It doesn't take long for his gaze to fall on me.

"What?" he says, and then smiles. "You didn't miss me?"

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

"There's literally nothing in this direction except for the Victor's Village, Pax."

"I told you that you'd figure out where we were going."

Getting dragged around by Aubrey and Pax isn't a new thing, but this is the first time ever we've headed in this direction. Let's be real for a second and talk about how the two of them usually sleep half the day away because they don't know how to go to sleep at night. Being out during the day in itself is a rarity for the four of us.

It's also conveniently the only time Emmett will come out without putting up a fight.

"Just so you know, I wasn't involved in this," he says, like he's trying to prove me right. Not surprising. Even if they had somehow dragged him into this while I was gone he would've stayed quiet the whole time anyway. I can't imagine he'd take too kindly to getting pulled into talking to all of the victor's. So what, they got back from the Capitol and Aubrey and Pax _immediately_ took to harassing the entire group of them? Or were they doing it the whole time, and just added Kiero and Aveza back into the mix once they got dropped off?

Probably the latter. They've got a penchant for inserting themselves into things they wouldn't ever have been involved in during normal circumstances.

"How'd you even get in in the first place?" Sure, this area is empty enough that it doesn't exactly scream high crime neighborhood, but there's no way either of them waited outside the front gate to be let in.

"I climbed the wall," Pax says simply, like that was meant to be obvious.

"Climbed the wall, slipped off the top, screamed, and by the time he hit the ground Della had come outside to see who was making such a racket," Aubrey says, and Pax scowls. That sounds about right, if I'm being honest. Falling off of things, generally being a nuisance to random members of the population, going into places we're not invited. All pretty typical.

The gate is open now, though, as we turn down the road. Pax, predictably, takes off at the first sound of a dog barking, which leaves us to trail after him, approaching more slowly.

"Why are we doing this?"

"Because you should totally live here now," Aubrey says. "I think it's only fair."

"I'm sure some people would beg to disagree on that one."

"Doesn't matter. _I_ think you should. And they're all so nice! You should meet them."

"Technically I already have met two of them," I point out.

"Shittiest context ever, though."

Not necessarily, if it all worked out like this. Kiero and Aveza did everything they could for both of us the whole time. Up until the last day it didn't really feel like going into the Games was a thing that was actually happening, because they tried to normalize it as much as they could for us. It had to end, of course, but it was nice while it lasted. And I know Olympia and I both appreciated it.

"Took you long enough to come around," Mia says. She's sitting at the top step of one of the porches, Kiero along the opposite side of the road.

"Wasn't my idea."

"Why does that not surprise me in the slightest?" Mia asks, smirking as the dog nearly topples Pax right over. Probably one of hers, then. As daunting as this place is, it doesn't look nearly as scary once you're standing in the middle of it. It doesn't look like there's any sign of anyone else. Out for the day, living their lives. It's nice to know that that's still an option for people like them. And me now, I guess.

"Where's Soren?" Mia asks.

Kiero shrugs. "Napping, probably."

"It's three in the afternoon," she says flatly. "He doesn't need to be napping. Do you guys really have that little stamina?"

"Please don't word it like that," Kiero responds, and she stands up, turns around, and opens the door to his house like she does it every day. Judging by the lack of reaction on his part, it probably does.

"Does that happen often?" Emmett asks.

"All the time. I'm used to it. Soren definitely never will be."

Aubrey laughs and then grabs Emmett's arm, dragging him over to Pax before I can get a word in otherwise. They've been oddly good about all of this. Giving me space even when I don't ask, filling up the silence during other times. It helps a lot more than I expected it to. I'm pretty sure my parents are catching on to me climbing out my window every other night, but if they have, nothing's been said. It's a miracle.

"How are you doing?" Kiero asks. He gets up off the stairs and edges closer, hands stuffed into his pockets.

"Depends on the day."

"Yeah, it usually does." I don't think it goes away, either. I think no matter what happens, no matter how many years you survive after the fact, it still stays with you. Eight's doing better than most, with how close this entire group is, but some people aren't so lucky.

"You lose two people, it sticks with you," Kiero says.

"You didn't kill either of yours," I point out. I don't think our situations could have been more further apart in that regard. Both of his lasted longer than mine, because he didn't decide to kill either of them. Or not decide, really. I don't even really remember making the decision either time, it was just something that happened. Something I have to live with.

"I think the sword backfired," I continue. "Don't think that was the intention when you sent it."

"Obviously not. But the three of us sat down - me and Dyna and Emori. That thing took every single cent from all of us. But we had to make a decision. We all knew what was going to happen, if the plan worked. Farren and Casper never really showed any promise as fighters, certainly not with a sword, but we knew that if any one of you was going to survive one of the three of you had to be willing to stand up and fight."

"And it was me," I say quietly.

"And it was you," he echoes. "I was hoping it was you. No way to tell that early on, but I was hopeful."

That sword was supposed to be mine after all. For once I don't feel bad about the fact that it's still tucked under my bed, rapidly gathering dust. Farren ended up with it because of circumstance, but my hand was the last one that held it. The last one that killed with it.

"Aubrey thinks I should live here," I tell him. "What do you think?"

"Well, I'm not about to tell you you don't deserve it. Because you do. But it's your choice. No one's going to force you into packing up and moving in with the rest of us. I didn't really know what to do when I first ended up here either. Being surrounded by people who actually get it helps, though. Your friends and your family can do a hell of a lot but they don't really get it."

No, they don't. But they're trying.

So is Kiero, though. Two very different circumstances and he's still trying to make this easier.

"Just think about it," he says. "And consider maybe not moving in next to Mia, or you'll become the number one target for harassment instead of Soren."

"Got it," I say, and can't help but smile.

At least smiling's getting easier too. The front door of Kiero's house re-opens, and Mia appears for all of two seconds before she shoves someone out the front door and down the stairs. Soren almost tumbles right into the middle of the road, looking very much like he was just woken up from sleep.

"You're twenty-six years old," Mia says from the doorway. "Socialize."

"I'm twenty-seven!" he calls back.

"Exactly!" she yells, and slams the door shut. Soren stomps right back up the stairs and tries the door handle, to no avail. After a moment he turns around and looks directly at the two of us. If he's surprised at me being here, he doesn't show it. It doesn't even really look like he cares.

"She just locked me out of our house," he says to Kiero. "Why did you let this happen?"

Kiero shrugs. "What do you want me to do?"

I laugh. And it really does feel easy, this time.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

Being dunked right back into reality is weird.

It feels a lot like I'm meant to forget about everything that happened before, and while it would be nice, I don't think I'm capable of that.

And I don't think I want to, either. Those types of things aren't ones that deserve to be forgotten about; they change and shape people. They can do terrible things to those same people, but I won't let the memories do the same thing to me. I need to turn them into something better. Remember the good things, few as they were, instead of letting the bad ones roam around without a leash.

That also means attempting to reign all my friends in _with_ a leash, which isn't exactly an easy task. It's even harder now that Fenton's around to egg them on, because Sentinel or not he's still eighteen years old and apparently finds amusement in my misery.

It's the moments when they're all gone that are the worst. Everyone heads home when the sun sets, and my parents make sure Ilara goes to sleep and then retire themselves.

If I don't do something, my head will explode. I'm sure of it.

There's something off about my whole room. I can't quite put my finger on it. Sitting on the end of the bed and staring around doesn't do anything, no matter how much time I put into it.

My desk is a little bit emptier than it normally would be. I'm not the cleanest person in the world. The morning of the reaping was hectic at best, but the stuff I threw all over the floor had been picked up and put away somewhere.

All of that stuff, at least that I can remember, is tucked away in my drawers.

That still doesn't change the fact that my desk is different.

After a while of staring at it I get to my feet and crack open the door. There's only two other sources of light out here besides the one coming from my own room - the candle safely contained at the end of the hall, and the light coming from under Beckett's door.

It's not weird that he's up later than everyone else, but I still hesitate before knocking on the door.

I've had enough people hovering, enough people asking me questions. Knocking on his door is going to prove, at least to him, that I'm not sleeping soundly like I used to. I'm still thinking about how stupid it probably was even when I hear his footsteps start up on the other side.

My brother opens the door, and narrows his eyes when he realizes it's me.

"What's up? You okay?"

I anticipate the question, and am already nodding before he even finishes taking a breath.

"Do you know where my stuff is? I think it was some of my school stuff - on my desk."

Beckett stares at me for a moment, probably wondering at what point in the Games I lost rational thinking and started focusing on the stupidest little things possible. Probably about the same time I wandered up to the grim reaper like that was ever a good idea.

He heads back into the room and returns a second later holding a box, which he deposits into my arms. It's heavier than what I expected, and when I peer past the first flap I can see a number of things. A few notebooks, even more textbooks, some pens and pencils.

So this _is_ my school stuff.

"Why do you have this?"

Beckett pauses for a moment. "Mom packed it up."

"When?"

"Seventh day? Eighth day? I don't really remember."

Right around when I was wandering around on my own, after Parker died. Hell, I thought I was as good as dead when he died, but it still doesn't hurt any less, knowing that she started packing up my stuff because she probably thought it too.

Not a single person had any faith.

"She was gonna start doing the rest of it - but you know. Shit happened."

"Yeah, it did," I murmur.

"Don't be angry at her. She—"

"It's fine. Thanks, Beck."

I take the box and flee back into my own room. Beckett is still staring after me when I shut the door, resolved to close myself in here for as long as possible. It would've been one thing to have put all my stuff away _after_ the Games, when they had no idea where I was or if I was safe with the people I was with. But they were watching me on the screen every day when they accepted it. Maybe because that made it easier.

I drop it at the foot of the bed and sit down again with a thud, staring at it. It shouldn't bug me this much. It's just some things I'll need come September again, when they force me back into school for some normalcy.

And she didn't think I'd be around to go back to school. I get it.

Things were still happening when I was gone. While my brain was falling apart my family was already mourning me. I can't help but wonder if they had it all figured out - the money and the funeral and everything that was going to happen once they brought my body back.

Probably. Most families tend to figure it out before they fall apart themselves.

I'm not dead, but it kind of feels like it would be easier if I was. Apparently everyone else had already accepted a life without me in it.

It would just be a lot easier as well if I could imagine myself gone.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

It's about the same reaction I was expecting.

If our positions were reversed, I'm sure I'd be reacting the same way. Nadir and her brother spend a few solid minutes in the square, both refusing to move while they both stare at me, seemingly at a loss for words.

I know Seren and Luca both went off in search for Audrel, which leaves me with the two of them, very few words exchanged.

The rest of the people in the square look even more bug-eyed. It's like the circus has rolled into town.

Nadir finally shakes herself out of it not long after, and reaches forward to grab me. She hesitates for a second before settling for the left arm instead of the right, still flesh and blood. Believe me, if she was surprised, she should've seen my reaction when I woke up. Waking up after days of being unconscious to suddenly having a metal arm attached to you at the shoulder isn't exactly a walk in the park.

"Jericho, c'mon!" she yells over her shoulder, and then starts pulling me after her, back the way they came. He quickly follows.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"Shut up for a second."

"Why?"

"You're causing a scene."

"I didn't do anything," I say flatly, but I don't think she really cares. Jericho's basically running to keep up with the two of us. Arm issue aside, I know I'm still not a hundred percent, but I'm not about to say that. Now apparently isn't the time.

It's not long until we get to what I assume is their house. She pushes me through the front door, shoves Jericho in after me, and then slams the door behind all three of us.

"You," she repeats, slightly breathless. "Are causing a scene. Why are you here?"

"Because you couldn't pay me to go back to Two to see my brother?"

"Not what I meant. Do you not know about what happened?"

"Obviously. Why do you think I'm actually here?"

She pauses at that, and looks at me. Really looks, I think, for the first time, instead of just confused staring. It's not a lie.

"Why didn't you go to One?"

"Seren got a hold of them. Dimara said she can handle it. And I think she can."

"But I can't?" she asks. Not even what I meant, but my articulation skills aren't exactly on point right now. I'm blaming that on the days of near starvation and the blood-loss and getting a new arm attached to me. It's a lot for one person to handle.

"You have more than one issue," I point out. "Tell me where he lives. I'll go and punch him."

At the current moment, Nadir's giving Mauro a run for his money in the disapproving looks department. Jericho looks between that and confusion, lingering just behind the couch. Probably giving himself a shield, just in case anything happens. He really doesn't have the whole story, then.

"You told _him_?" Jericho asks after a moment. "Okay?"

"Why haven't _you_ punched him?" I ask. Seems like a very easy solution to me.

"Dude, scrawny arms," he fires back. "He'd kick my ass. I'll gladly come and watch though if you go and do it."

"No one's doing anything," Nadir interrupts, a second before Jericho mutters something that sounds an awful lot like _yes, we absolutely are_. I like him already. Someone enabling my bad tendencies? Perfect. Nadir's stopped talking, now, and is just staring again.

"Okay," she says slowly. "Explain— explain _that._ "

She's been unable to get around the elephant room, that elephant being the arm, since we walked in here. I can't see it in her eyes. Even I'm not quite used to it. It's different than the left, obviously. There are just enough subtle differences that I can feel it every time I move. But it's also still a hell of a lot better than having no arm at all. In fact, I'd say it's a vast improvement to the old one.

"It's an arm," I try, and she makes a face.

"Thanks, Einstein. Where'd you get it from?"

"I was _unconscious,_ not robbing people's graves. It's amazing what twelve weirdos can put together in their spare time."

It's also amazing how nine weirdos can seemingly actually get along, after all of this, when we were meant to be enemies. I was serious - I heard Dimara's voice myself, through their giant communications system. I could've gone there, even after that. That's what most people would have expected me to do.

Seren would have had me sit in Six this whole time, until I _was_ a hundred percent. Until all of this was over.

But she also couldn't stop me from coming with them.

"Personally, I think having a metal arm ratchets you up like ten points on the cool scale," Jericho says, smiling when Nadir scowls at him. "What? It does!"

I would say that's the truth, but the truth is whacked, these days. After a moment Nadir actually leans forward and pokes at it, like she still doesn't believe me. There's no give underneath her fingertips. No sign of any flesh. Just cool, solid metal, from shoulder to the ends of the fingers. My fingers, now.

"I'm glad you're not dead," she says finally.

I smile. "Me too."

It feels good, to think that I'm not in any immediate danger. Outside this door, maybe. I do know what happened here, and I know that it could happen again. It could happen to any of us.

But I'm not falling again, so soon after getting back up.

* * *

This is the by-product of me watching The Winter Soldier far, far too many times. Would definitely recommend it.

Anyway it's like five in the morning and I'm tired but the third (and final?) victor-au-snippet thing what the fuck ever is up on my profile, within the story _this could be the end of us_. If you don't know what that is, I don't know how else to explain it other than what I just said above, but the author's notes in it will explain it in totality for you, if you want to check it out and see what all your kids are up to in the random universe in which they did not in fact die. Maybe.

Until next time.


	44. Up In Smoke

District Four; Easthaven Community.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

I can only lurk around Rory's house for so long.

I don't think anyone would force me out, even if he's thinking about doing it. Not one of Theo, Ronan or Costa will say a single thing after everything we went through, at least not about my home life. I'm pretty sure his Mom is on the fast track to adopting me; even though she doesn't know, by this point she must suspect that something's up if I'm still reluctant to go home at this point.

It's not like I have it that bad. It could be a lot worse. But after seeing this, it makes it all the more difficult. This family has pretty much nothing, nothing except the bare minimum and each other, and it doesn't make any sense. Our situations at the heart of it really aren't that different, yet I'm the one who had zero problems punching my sister the day of the reaping, and he was only volunteering to ensure this his mom and siblings could actually live a fulfilling life, once he was gone.

I guess it's all about how you're raised. He meant everything to his mom since the day he was born and to mine, Malia was always the better choice. The one that should've volunteered, the won that would've won had it actually been a normal year.

And maybe she would've been right, but now we'll never know.

It's still very early on a Sunday morning, and the entire house is asleep. It would be way too easy to leave without anyone noticing, but knowing Rory, he'll wake up and spend the entire day wondering where the hell I am instead of doing anything else.

I crouch down next to the couch and poke him in the arm. He hardly moves.

"Rory."

"Hm?"

"I'm gonna go home. I don't know if I'll be back tonight."

He cracks opens his eyes and turns his head enough to the side, clearly trying to make me out. "Want me to come with you?"

Honestly, yes. It would bring a lot of the focus off of me and onto him, and as awkward as it probably would be at least he'd be there in an attempt to fix it, because we all know I can't. I may not have any desire to go home, but if his family knew he was coming back, there's a pretty strong chance that mine did too. But they haven't come looking, haven't asked. It's almost like they care about me coming home as little as I care to actually go back.

"I can handle it," I respond, fighting the urge to sigh.

"Don't punch her again."

"If I do, she was asking for it."

He looks like he's about to make a face, but instead he smiles. Far cry from the usual.

"Look at you, smiling at the thought of violence," I say. "You're evolving."

He shakes his head, and closes his eyes again. Okay, so that's probably not exactly it, but it's still nice to see him smiling, after all of this bullshit. I stand up and let go of his arm, but he quickly grabs mine before I can get any further and pulls me back down to kiss me. Not a thing that's been happening too often, because it still kind of feels like something we should be keeping to ourselves.

"Seriously, don't," he insists, just as I open the door. I wait until there's nothing but a crack left to respond.

"No promises!" I call back, and shut the door.

It's not a bad day to actually make the venture myself. The sun is shining and while there's not many people around here there's no doubt dozens of them out on the beaches and docks. A lot of them are probably still working, but today's usually our day to do the opposite. Relax for a day and take it all in.

Four _is_ a lot prettier than most places, I'll give it that.

I don't really stop to look around, though. For the most part I keep my head down and my hands in my pockets, resolutely avoiding the gaze of the people I do start passing. I'm walking as fast as I can, to give myself as little time to talk myself out of this I can.

I shouldn't be so nervous to go back to my own house. It's not the house, though. It's the people. Malia didn't even go the goodbyes because they were taking her, still screaming bloody murder, off to the clinic, and Mom only showed up for a minute before she said she had better things to do. Years of prioritizing one child over the other had finally gone into affect. Even going into the Hunger Games that didn't really matter, because I wasn't the one chosen to go in the first place. _Malia would've thrived in there_ , is what she said, and that's probably the truth. But Malia thrives in a lot of things - that's what being the golden child is all about. The Games were the only thing I could ever see in my future.

I stand in front of the door for what feels like hours and what must be minutes, in reality. Finally, I take a deep breath and knock.

Knocking on the front door of my own house must be a new low.

I hear the footsteps long before they approach the front door, trying to breathe normally. You'd think I was about to walk into hell. It's just my mom, just my sister. If those two people weren't the ones that I've struggled with the most over my entire life than I think it would be easier.

The door opens, maybe half a foot, and my mother is peering through the other side.

The second she sees my face she opens the door wider, but besides that, she doesn't move. I'm rooted to the spot, pretty confused about what I'm supposed to do. I watched Rory's siblings nearly tackle him to the ground, and this is what I get.

At least it's what I expected.

"Hi," I try. Her expression doesn't change.

"You're back."

"Sure am."

I should've made Rory come with me. He would have, in two seconds flat, and I wouldn't be in the process of dying on the front steps.

"I was wondering where you were," she says. "We heard the other one was back."

The other one, because I don't think any tributes ever have a name to her. Malia was pretty much the only one that existed to her. In any regard, really, but especially with that. It was always about how she was coming back, not anyone else, and I'm not sure if Malia would have survived _this_ the same way we all did. I don't think my mother, or Malia for that matter, would appreciate hearing it.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Maybe _I_ should go for a hug, or something. We all know how well that usually ends for me.

"Is Malia here?" I find myself asking.

"Upstairs. Sleeping, I would assume."

Right. Still early. Do I have to ask to come into my own house? Do I even want to risk going upstairs to my own room, with Malia so close by? Probably not. She's a demon when someone interrupts her sleep, an even more terrible one than usual.

"No, I'm not," Malia says, appearing at the top of the stairs, all while I wish for the ground to open up and swallow me. She leans her arms against the railings and stares. She does just look like she woke up, but somehow still manages to look better than half the District combined. I've never understood how she manages to make things look so effortless when I have to practically make my brain collapse just to work up the nerve to hug someone.

"What?" I snap finally. She doesn't look as bad as I expected her to, after how hard I hit her.

"Who's shirt is that?" she asks, raising her eyebrows. "It's not yours."

No, it's not. Wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. But if anyone really thinks Rory's going to complain about me stealing clothes after we just spent weeks in the same shirts, then they're insane. They should be grateful that I'm not still wearing that stuff. If I had felt confident enough to come here and get some of my own clothes sooner, then we wouldn't have this problem.

It doesn't change the fact that I don't know what to say.

She looks like she's about to make a snide comment, though. It's not exactly breaking news.

"How's your nose?" I ask, before she can decide what to say. Her expression quickly falls flat, nose wrinkling even though it looks like it hurts. Good.

"Fuck you," she announces, and then disappears back into the hallway.

"Malia!" Mom calls, and then turns around to glare at me. As if she didn't make the opening comment. How is any of this my fault, even now? I don't even care if I'm the priority or not - it's just mind-boggling to me, how little care there is in this entire house. Everyone else went back home to their family and friends, all too eager to take them back, and I'm stuck with this.

Figures. Every time I try and do something to push back the universe shoves right back, and it does it a lot harder.

I should've known that punching her would only lead to this.

Who knows, maybe I was lying. Maybe I will be back at Rory's house tonight.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

There's not a chance that I ever forget what Lydia said.

She's probably over it. She got out her sadness and grief all in the early days, when she was mourning a brother who didn't care if he was really mourned or not. But Evie's different, even I know that. If Lydia and their parents have shoved it all back because it wasn't worth it in the first place, then Evie's the one still dealing with it. Surely her friends wouldn't bring it up, with the recency. No one wants to be the first to ask.

Which kinda leaves it up to _me_ to be the one that asks. That means tracking her down in the first place, and I'm not about to ask a stranger where they live and barge right in like I own the place.

I do know that she sometimes helps out at the little food vendor that serves the guys working at the lumberyards when they get a break, so that's where I head, not long after Lydia talks to me. She's not there at the time, it wouldn't be that easy, but the lone guy working there is nice enough to let me leave her a message. I don't know how long I stand there before I scribble my address at the top. There's no telling what the right thing to say is - come to my house if you wanna talk? If you're ever bored, come see me? What the hell is the right thing to say to a girl you only half-know, when you spent a few days getting to know her brother before he fell fifty stories to his death?

Can I blame Blair for this? I'm going to.

I leave the note there regardless, though, and have no choice but to return home and wonder about it. For all I know, the guy who's name I didn't even bother asking was going to pitch it the second I left. He never even said when Evie was coming back, if ever. Maybe after all of this she's locked herself away and doesn't care about working anymore. I wouldn't blame her, I don't think I would either.

My parents still have to go to work, still have to continue their mindless routine. Half the time I wind up alone, which isn't all that bad. After a few hours it gets tedious, though. Boredom starts to creep in. I really didn't think I'd miss being around eight other people, but most of the time at least one of them was talking. It served as a nice distraction.

There's none of that here.

I re-arrange my room three times over, and then the living room. I don't think my parents will be impressed with that, but there's nothing else to do. We all saw what a walk did to me last time.

Besides, Evie could show up any second. I don't want to be somewhere out there when she does.

It's been a few days, but I still think there's a chance.

Nap, eat a snack, lay back down. Get irritated that the picture frame on the table under the window isn't centered even thought I moved it six times. Repeat, unless I fall asleep again.

I nearly fall off the couch when I hear the knock. I stumble off it, smash my knee into the corner of the table, and spend a few seconds aimlessly hopping around as pain spikes through my leg. I stumble fairly uselessly for the front door and rip it open as soon as I come into contact with it, uncaring for how hard it's going to hit the wall.

I'm almost surprised that it _is_ Evie. The door finally hits the wall and she takes a step back, eyes growing wider.

"Are you alright?" she asks. I'm still half-bent over, clutching my leg, and I fumble for the edge of the door to stop it from slamming back and hitting her.

"Peachy," I manage. "Ow."

Not exactly how I imagined this was going to kick off, but it makes more sense than anything normal that could have happened instead. Like I said, I'm surprised she even bothered showing up. If someone I didn't know that well left me a weird note I'd probably throw it out. I'm glad she didn't. She stares at me, and then manages a smile. You can tell just by looking at her that what Lydia said is true - she's not handling it well. How anyone in his family is handling it otherwise is beyond me. Even I was shocked, after only a few days of knowing him.

"Do you wanna come in?"

She nods, and steps around me into the hallway, wringing her hands together. She stays there while I shut the door and kick the shoes that I had scattered all over the floor back into their corner. She's just looking around, not over her shoulder at me.

So, what now? I didn't think past actually getting her here. If she wants to talk, like Lydia said, then I kind of expected her to well, talk. I'm sure not an expert conversation starter, especially not about topics such as her extremely dead brother and my former ally. That's not exactly an ice breaker, but what else is there to say? At this point it's the elephant in the room.

"I got your note," she says.

"I figured," I respond. "Or else I'd question how you found my house."

She smiles again, which I'll take as a success, and I move for the couch. Maybe if I just try and act as naturally as possible then this will be easier for her. It's not like she's someone I've known since I was little. This is unfamiliar territory for the both of us.

We both have problems. She's grieving, and so am I, but not in the same way. I'm grieving everything I no longer have, because I started getting used to it when I probably shouldn't have. Evie sits down next to me on the edge of the couch, testing her weight.

"Lydia talked you into this, didn't she?" she asked.

"She mentioned it, but she didn't talk me into anything. I just thought - well, I don't know what I thought. That I could talk to you, or vice versa. Whatever you want."

"You don't have anyone to talk to anymore," she says quietly. "I get it."

Like I said, very different situations. She has to be talking about Camden, because there's no other options, and all of mine are in other Districts, all the way across the country. We're not technically alone in this but it feels like we are.

"My friends are like, actively avoiding talking about it," she says. "And sometimes I appreciate it but most times I just wish I could get it over with. My parents have both been really quiet and Lydia's been gone a lot. I don't know what she's doing, but it's working. So it's just me that's trying to get over it, and it's because before all of this I'd tell _him_ all my problems. Stupid stuff like, like lame group projects or bullies or anything. And I didn't realize until he was gone, but I never asked if anything was wrong with him. I never did."

"That's not your fault," I tell her. "It's not."

"It may not be, but I feel like it is. Maybe if he had told me everything he was feeling he wouldn't have volunteered. Maybe he'd still be alive. And I'll never know."

She'll never know. And it would probably be easier for her to move on, if she did. There's no telling what path Camden would have gone down, so I have to convince myself that it was for the best. It could've been worse, for all we know. Everything could always have turned out worse.

I think that'll be a hard thing to get into her head, but I have the time to do it now.

Time may be out for him, but now I've got plenty of it.

I might as well do something with it.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

Knowing more almost always helps a situation.

But not this time.

The more news that comes out, the worse it gets. Disaster doesn't happen often in One, so when it happens, suddenly everyone's interested. It's a weird spectacle, to see the people of One get even more nosy than they already are, but it's happening steadily.

There are still ashes everywhere. Not a single person really tried to save the building - we all just let it burn to the ground while we stood by and watched. It was shock, that stopped us all from moving. The Academy had been standing for so long. The shell of the one that had come before it still stands a few blocks away, abandoned and decrepit.

That first one may have made us Careers in this first place, but the second kept it going. The second made me who I am.

It's hard to even look at. I spent years of my life training in this pile of ash, even slept there before Kali's family gave me a room to myself. It's mostly taped off, but it's easy enough to raise it and duck underneath. This is where the ground becomes unsteady, where the half-melted structure of the building veers into dangerous. Kali's not here, because Kali's has even more trouble looking at it than I do, but I can't make myself stay away.

If I could stay away, I would have never started training in the first place.

It's like a bad car accident, as ironic as that is to my life. It's like I can't look away.

"You trying to torture yourself?" Ivory asks. I know she's been her a lot too. What is this, victor's survival guilt? It's starting to seem like it.

"You're here too."

"Watching you, because Valiant needed a nap. Are you enjoying walking through all of this?"

No. Definitely not. But it's walk through it or sit at home all day and think about it. Kali knows I hardly slept last night, and I smelled the smoke the whole time. Sleep won't get any easier if I pretend this didn't happen at all.

Ivory pokes me in the back of the shoulder with something, and when I turn she hands me what looks like a newspaper. Actual concrete news is something I've been expecting, but dreading all the same. It's just evidence of things I already knew, confirmation written across the front page.

 **Nine People Killed In Aralia Training Academy Fire.**

 _District One Peacekeepers have arrested Caius Muric, 22, after responders were called to the Aralia Training Academy at 1:24pm June 24th, Thursday, after reports of a fire. Authorities say he turned himself in shortly after and has been cooperating since the time of the event._

 _Nine people were confirmed to have been in the Center at the time, including 31 year old victor Royal Grayson and her fiancé, 34 year old Chauncy Tasaki. The other names have not yet been released._

 _Muric has been charged with arson and nine counts of second-degree murder._

 _More information coming soon._

"What other information could there possibly be?" I ask angrily, and half of me wants to crumple the whole newspaper into a ball and pitch it across the ground. I don't let go of it.

Ivory shrugs. "Who knows. Reporters eat this shit up."

Eat up the fact that nine people are dead, including the girl who spent so many years training me. Who acted like an older sister to me at the times when I really needed it, before Kali. I probably wouldn't be here without her.

And now she's gone, up in smoke like the rest of the country.

"Muric said he didn't know there were people inside. Do you believe that?"

"Yeah," I respond. I wish I didn't believe him; hating him outright would make this a whole lot easier. Regardless, he'll be gone for years now. Not as long as Tavian, but long enough. Enough families were torn apart already.

I kick at a piece of debris and it crumbles into dust.

"What do you think the Aralia siblings would think about this mess?" Ivory asks.

"Well, Gloss died eighty-five years ago, and never even saw it. No one built it in his honor – it was all her."

"Well, she was the one that won twice. I'd say she deserved it. And she'd be pissed. You're lucky you never had to meet her. She was in her eighties and still insisted on training us, when she finally carked it."

"She trained everyone who won after the 75th besides me and Royal. So what does that say about us?"

Now Royal's dead, and I didn't even properly win. Cashmere Aralia wouldn't just be pissed, she'd probably have set the damn thing on fire herself, and made sure we were all inside before she shut the doors.

"Who cares? She's dead."

"I care," I insist. "What's the point of us coming back if we can't do anything at all to stop shit like this?"

"I wouldn't know, because I don't ever try," she says. "Why do you think everyone hates me, hated Cicely so much? Because we accepted from day one that trying only gets you places in the Games. Once you're out you're fucked."

And doesn't that seem like the cold, hard truth? I hate it. That's why I'm so angry. There was no stopping this. Even if I had known, even if we had gotten here sooner, it still would have happened.

I don't like watching things crumble around me.

"Something else is going to happen," I murmur. "I'm sure of it."

"Probably," Ivory agrees. "But what are you going to do about it?"

Something. I'll do something. I won't walk through any more ashes. I won't be like what Ivory says. I'll do something because I'll go insane if I don't.

When that something happens, I'll be the one setting it on fire.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

The house is quiet when I wake up.

The feeling that settles in my stomach is a very bad one.

It's usually loud that's bad, but not in my world. Loud means that the terrible thing is already happening, quiet is the dangerous moment before it does. It's waiting for something that you're sure is going to come but not knowing when it will.

Quiet moments are the worst ones you can have.

I shouldn't be creeping around the halls of my own house. There's nothing hiding under my bed, no shadow in the corner. It just feels like there is. My parent's room is empty, as to be expected, but Jericho's gone too. Worst of all is the fact that Blair's disappeared, and I know for a fact that he fell asleep on our couch last night. For him to be gone now probably means that he got bored, and with Jericho missing as well I'm afraid to walk outside for fear that half the District will be razed to the ground.

There is someone outside though, a shadow outside the flimsy curtains, around the side of the house. It could be anyone, it could be one of my grandparents coming to check in on me, but I know it's not. Maybe jumping to conclusions is one of my problems, but it's kept me alive thus far.

Jumping to conclusions is one of the only things I know for certain that I'm good at.

Someone's turning the door handle. All the dozens of people it could be... well, it doesn't really matter, does it?

When Blair steps through the door I'm almost tempted to shove him right back out it. Almost. A very large part of me deflates, though.

"What are you doing?" he asks, and it takes me a moment to realize that I'm standing in the entry-way, probably still looking as if I'm about to hit him. That, or run away. Whichever option was better at the time. Jericho is standing just behind him, looking at me with an eyebrow raised. It doesn't appear like they've knocked any buildings outside down. That's a good sign.

"Nothing," I say, though I don't think either of them believe me. "Can you two not disappear and then lurk around the house like a pair of stalkers?"

"I _live_ here," Jericho says, at the same time Blair mentions something about coming back from the square. But if they came from the square, then they would've walked in from the opposite direction. There would have been no reason to pass the side window, unless they circled around the house before they came in, but why would they have done that?

The back door opens.

I don't know which one of us hears it first, but we all freeze at about the same time. There's no way my parents would come through the back door. There's really only one person who ever came through the back door, for whatever reason. Maybe subtlety has been something always worth achieving to him.

"Shit," Jericho says very quietly. Not helping.

I don't want to head for the back door, but there's no avoiding it now. If I don't, something really bad is going to happen right in the middle of my house. Not that things like that haven't already happened, but I feel like this one could get uglier than most. I hold out a hand, back to the two of them. It might stop Jericho, but it's not going to stop Blair for very long. Maybe a few minutes, and that's if he's feeling generous.

"Thane?" I call out, stepping back into the hallway. Blair makes a face. Even less time than I thought, if he's unimpressed at that.

It almost feels like old times. He pops around the corner, nearly not as scary as he is in my head. That's the worst part; he looks so normal from a distance. Anyone would think he is. That's exactly what I thought, when we first started going out. I would have never assumed that we'd end up here, but I'm also not so sure that I'd have survived the Games if we hadn't gotten here. Maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit.

"Hey," he says easily, and leans up against the wall. "I was wondering if you were here."

I wish I was anywhere _but_ here, but he can't know that.

"Where else would I be?"

"Thought you'd be dead by now, to be honest. I know I said you were coming back, but I didn't actually believe that."

And there it is. We're starting up quickly, aren't we? Of course he didn't _actually_ believe that, or so he says. That's what being a supportive boyfriend is all about, and we all know he doesn't have a supportive bone in his body.

"Sorry," I say, and smile. Cross my arms over my chest. Force myself not to take a step back when he creeps forward a few feet. Going through all of the motions from before. There's a few really big differences now, though. Now I've got two other people in the opposite room listening to this. I should've made the two of them go outside - I don't want them hearing this, I don't want to live knowing that other people know exactly what happened here. It's not just that, though. It's the fact that I killed two people and Thane still doesn't care, still steps closer without a care in the world.

"You can stop right there," I inform him, and for a moment, he actually pauses.

"Why?"

"Doesn't matter. In fact, you can get the fuck out of my house."

It doesn't feel as good saying it as I thought it would, but maybe that's because he smiles. No cares in the world, as per usual. It's like everything I say goes in one ear and right out the other.

" _Get the fuck out of my house_ ," he echoes, laughing. "Wow. What, you come back and suddenly you think you can say whatever you want without consequences?"

There are consequences to everything I say.

He's nearly directly in my face, now, and my foot is starting to edge backwards. My face may be blank as can be, but everything else is going to give me away. There's only one thought I'm clinging to now, and that's the fact that for the first time in what feels like forever, there's no bruises on my body left from him. There are scars, and the mental trauma, but besides that, everything else is gone. And I don't _want_ to re-start the cycle. I don't want to be beaten down anymore.

"I could kill you," I tell him, but it doesn't feel true. If I was capable of killing him, I'd probably have done it a long time ago.

"Go for it, then," he fires back. Practically offering himself up, because he knows the truth as much as I do.

I can see the wind up happening. In about two seconds I'll get hit. Who knows where. Not where it hurts the most, that's for sure. There will be more build up to that.

Blair gets between us before anything can happen.

That's longer than I thought he would last.

Thane manages to look shocked for all of a second and a half before he realizes that Blair is quite literally dragging him back outside, and starts trying to push back. Probably not going to do much, with the momentum Blair has, but Thane always fights back. He doesn't know how to just let things happen.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Jericho says in a rush, darting around me and after them. "I egged him on, I shouldn't have done that."

Probably not. But I think Blair would have done it regardless of whether someone had pushed him to or not. I'm trembling just the slightest bit, but I don't think it's fear. I think it's the fact that it _didn't_ happen, for what must be the first time. No thanks to me. I probably would've let him hit me and then there probably would've been a throwdown in the front hallway.

I take a deep breath, and go outside.

Blair's managed to shove him up against the side of the house, which is still a little better than inside. It's the arm he's got across his throat and shoulders that's keeping him pinned there as Jericho starts talking to him, and metal arm plus vulnerable throat probably means Thane running out of oxygen at a quicker rate than he normally would.

I really don't want someone dead outside my back door, even if it is Thane.

"So, what?" Thane says. He's still struggling. "You're shacking up with Two now? Would've been nice to know."

"God, do you ever shut the fuck up?" Jericho asks. A question I wish I had the opportunity to ask him more, now that he doesn't have a chance to hit back. It's awful. Maybe this isn't exactly satisfying but I don't feel any remorse, either. Even with less air than usual Thane is still trying to stretch out for me, still trying to get close. He's strong, not District Two career strong, but I also know that Blair's not fully recovered from all the shit he went through. This could turn a lot uglier than even I could imagine, if Thane gets a second.

"Consider keeping your guard dogs on leashes, Nads," he says. I really hope I'm imagining his skin going paler. "Something bad's going to happen to them one day if you don't."

More threats. _Empty_ threats. He won't go after Blair again, not when he's already losing for the first time, and Jericho has enough sense in him to turn tail and run when he's unmatched. Every single thing he says is just succeeding in making Blair angrier. You'd think you'd be trying to get the guy who's currently on the fast-track to choking you out to loosen up, not the other way around.

"Listen to me," Blair starts, and if his voice sounds even a fraction of the same as it did when he went after Camden, then it's no wonder he went flying.

"No, you listen to _me,_ " Thane insists. "You won't be here forever, Two. And once you're gone—"

"Once I'm gone, what?"

Thane won't finish that sentence. It's not just the fact that it's getting harder to talk. I know he's a coward, it's no secret. He'll do whatever he damn well pleases until it's him that's in the crossfire, and then he'll slink away. Until it's safe for him to come out again.

It's not going to be safe here for him ever again.

He's got seconds, now, not minutes. Blair's not showing any signs of letting go.

"Blair, let him go," I instruct. He'd have zero issue killing him. I can't decide if I'd even care, at the end of the day. Probably not. But I'm not letting Thane take over my life any more than he already has, and that's what he'll do if he winds up dead. He'll be dead and haunting me the same way he did when he was alive, and I won't live with that forever. It's not about him. This was never about him. It's always been about me.

Blair lets go. I thought I would have to take a step forward and pull him off myself, but he lets go. Thane nearly hits the ground and catches himself at the last moment, a hand braced against the siding, wheezing for breath. It's a miracle he can even stand.

Not one of us moves as he walks off, unsteady. I keep expecting him to turn around and come back for round two.

He'd lose again, but it wouldn't be unlike him to try it.

"Jesus," Jericho mutters. "You okay?"

He's clearly asking me, but all I can do is take a deep breath, as he puts a hand on my arm. Blair waits until Thane's long gone, disappeared from view, until he turns around to look at me. The anger's faded away, replaced by something that looks a lot like actual concern. What a far cry that is from our training days.

"Sorry," he says. I didn't think he'd sound guilty, but here we are.

 _Everyone always is_. That's what he said, way back at the ruined base. Something like that, anyway. It seems like it was a lot longer ago than it really was.

Apologies are no longer the thing I'm going to hear the most of, in my life.

"I'm not."

It actually feels like the truth.

* * *

I realized approximately five minutes ago that I didn't have an author's note for this chapter, so ... this is it, y'all.

Until next time.


	45. A Thousand Yards

District Ten; Hearne Hill.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

I absolutely have not taken to shutting myself in my room.

It's embarrassing. Or at least, it would be, if anyone really cared. I think this is exactly what my family expected me to do, so they're not questioning it. My friends might think it was weird, if they had ever bothered to come around when Sam had told me they were going to.

He still feels bad about it, that I know. But him feeling bad about it doesn't change the fact that my friends are apparently actively avoiding me, after what they saw.

Maybe they're just scared to get caught up in all of this. That I can't blame them for.

"Sweetheart," Dad says, trying to poke his head through the minuscule gap I've left between my door and the frame. "There's someone here to see you."

I blink. _Someone_. That doesn't mean my friends. If it was Ada or Eliza, he'd say so. No point in beating around the bush, no point in getting me excited over something that's probably not going to happen, at this point. He's really not giving me much to go off of, but at least it can't be someone had.

Hopefully. That's what I've thought about a lot of things, though.

Kellen is standing just inside the front door when I finally make my way out into the hall. He smiles at the sight of me. I almost forgot that they had all been brought home, the victors. Him and Barron have been back much longer than me, at any rate.

"Hey, kid," he says. "Good to see you."

I nod. "You too."

Despite our odds, or lack thereof, Kellen never treated us like we had any less of a chance. Maybe that can be attributed to the fact that he knew all along that we could be escaping, but even then I wouldn't have been the one to put odds on either of us. He was probably hoping in the months before the reaping that his tributes would be strong enough, brave enough to survive. I don't think he was ever hoping for me.

"Let me know if you need anything," Dad offers, and pats me on the shoulder before departing to the kitchen. Not who I expected, but not a bad surprise either.

"You look pretty good," Kellen says. "I looked terrible after mine."

"It's been a little bit. And you had an excuse. Desert sucks."

"That it does," he laughs. "Come sit with me?"

He doesn't wait for a response before he takes a seat on the edge of the couch, but it's not like I was going to refuse anyway. I can't help feeling a little awkward – unlike before on the train. Then he was trying to help. Now I don't know why he's here.

He must notice my confusion, because he relaxes himself, like that will help. And it does, oddly enough. There's no reason to be nervous around him.

"I just wanted to check on you," he explains.

"Why?"

"Everyone needs someone to check on them, afterward. Someone who gets it. And I saw your two friends the other day. I expected you to be with them."

Yeah, me too. It seems like we all expected a lot of things that aren't going to happen, and I guess that's just how life is. If you had told me a few months ago that I'd be getting reaped into the Hunger Games, that I'd be living through them, I'd have called you insane. That doesn't make sense no matter who you are.

"Did you lose any friends afterward?" I ask. No point in trying to shut my mouth. Things can't get any more out of the blue than they already are. Besides, Kellen's had years to get used to the person he is now. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around everything, with little results. If Kellen can do it after _volunteering_ then surely I can.

"I lost friends before I even went," he says slowly. "Not all of them. A few. You know, I started training myself, started trying to prepare for it. And when certain people found out they lost it. Called me insane. In those few months before most of the people I knew spent the majority of their time trying to distance themselves from a kid that was going to volunteer for his death. None of them came back when I did."

"And what about the ones who stuck around?"

"I'm still friends with some of them. Some I grew apart from. It's weird, because I've thought about this a lot, actually. If Falco hadn't gone in the Quell I think he would've been one of the few that was waiting for me when I got back. But there's no way of knowing that. Who knows, maybe he would have run for the hills too."

A nice person would tell him otherwise, but I'm the one witnessing firsthand people turning away in the opposite direction from me. I didn't know his friends. I probably won't ever.

"There are a lot of good people out there," he says. "I think you already found quite a few of them. It's just about finding them all the time. Two guys from my school, Falco's girlfriend. There's a lot of them."

"Are you still friends with her?"

"No."

"That's sad."

"That's life. I'm living mine, she's living hers. I told Falco I'd take care of her if things went south, but the fact of the matter is she doesn't need me taking care of her. I think she's married now. Has a kid. If she's happy, that's all that matters. Loss sticks with you, in whatever form it takes, but eventually you make the choice to move on from it."

He makes it sound so simple. So _easy._ And maybe it is, to someone who won eight years ago. That's a lot of time to think things over and cross the bridges you've built, that others have tried to burn down.

Dimara may be the one dealing with an actual amount of fire, and Nadir too, but it feels to me as if there's a blaze inching closer on the horizon anyway.

"You seem like you have it all figured out," I murmur. I wish I could be that confident.

He smiles wryly. "Good at faking it, anyway. That's a mentor's job. It's a good thing you'll never have to go through that."

"You really think that?" I question. "You really think it's over?"

"Nothing's ever _over._ Not until you're in the ground. And even then who knows."

I don't know what to believe in. I don't know if there's anything _to_ believe in. It's a nice dream. Kellen may be good at faking it but if he can sit here and talk about it, years later, then there's hope for me yet. There's hope for all of us. All those good people I know, or knew. We're all spread out so thin now that it almost feels like I dreamt it all.

This is no longer just a dream, though. This is something dangerously close to becoming real.

Dreams are equally dangerous. I had hope coming back that things could go back to normal, that it would be like I never left, but that's clearly not the case. I'm almost not sure if I would even want it to be.

I can't go back to the girl I was before, and I don't want to. That's the least terrifying thing of all.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

Ever since that night Beckett opened the door, I'm unable to get a minute to myself.

If my parents aren't home I can hear Beckett banging around in the kitchen. If it's not them it's Ilara insisting she needs help with homework when it's the beginning of July, and we all know she doesn't. If someone hasn't talked to me in an hour someone will come in with a snack, even though they've been feeding me enough food to supply an army with.

Right now, it's my friends. But at least it's quiet.

Viera's asleep, her face mashed into my blankets, at the end of the bed. I'm pretty convinced Austin fell asleep leaning against the wall not long ago, or he's at least doing a convincing job of faking it. It's late. They should both be home by now, in their own beds, but if it wasn't them it would be Ellis, or Clement and Anita. It's always someone.

It is touching, and I don't want to sound ungrateful, but sometimes you just need a second to breathe.

My memories aren't going so well, though. I haven't gotten past the first page of the notebook I got back from Beck's room, no matter how hard I try. It's occurred to me, since I started trying, that I don't even know what to write. Laurel, maybe, would be a little bit easier than most, but even that's currently pushing it. I had Early in my life for maybe a day and a half before we went in opposite directions.

And I can't think of anything to write, for Parker.

It's terrible. I don't know a single thing about him, save for his name and his age and how many stupid days he lasted before Rory put an arrow in his chest. I don't know what his family's like, or what part of Five he came from, or how the hell he got so smart. I don't know anything important, anything worth remembering, except for the part that he indirectly saved my life. Took the target off of me, even if that's not what he meant to do.

I just wish I knew something. Something stupid, like what he asked to eat before the launch, or what his favorite color was.

But I have nothing.

It's no surprise that I've done nothing but write down names so far. Even though Laurel should be easier nothing worthwhile is coming to mind for her either.

I lay back and drop the notebook over my face, gently shoving Viera's legs out of the way. The whole bed creaks so loud that I can hear Austin stir, but don't bother moving. There's no point to any of this right now.

"What'cha doing?" Austin asks, and I mumble something that definitely isn't a word. He must clamber to his feet, because the floorboards creak this time, and then he plucks the notebook off my face. I would stop him, if I wasn't so tired. In more than one way. With my face revealed there's nowhere to focus my eyes except his face as he looks at the first page, almost completely blank. Just some names that could belong to anyone, really. There's surely another Parker in this world, another Laurel.

Maybe not another Early. But I think she was one of a kind.

He doesn't ask what it is. That's what surprises me the most.

"What was Laurel's favorite color?" I wonder. Austin lays the notebook back down on my chest, and I don't bother grabbing for it as it slides back down and lands softly on the bed next to me.

"Red," he answers.

Red, like the dress she was wearing when they called her name. Red like all the blood that was keeping her alive, before it wound up spread out across the bridge because of one wrong move. Something that I could have prevented, had I stopped her. Early wasn't there anymore - Laurel didn't have to listen to her. We should have never gone out there.

"I'm sorry," I say, and Austin doesn't respond. He picks the notebook back up and then pries the pencil out of my hand. He scribbles something down, quickly, and then closes it. He doesn't give it back to me, but instead places it on the makeshift table to the side.

"I'm gonna go home," he says. "Do you want me to wake her up?"

I shake my head. No point in that. I'm sure Austin doesn't want to deal with grumpy Viera, and neither do I. I watch as he collects his things, stuffs his feet back into his shoes without untying them. It's a lot of little things, but the one that's sticking out the most is the lack of a response. I apologized, and got nothing. I don't know why I'm surprised.

He opens the door and pauses. I didn't expect him to stop.

I think I'm just really bad at seeing things coming.

"Don't be sorry," he murmurs. "Night."

The door clicks shut, and I don't even get my arm up fully to at least wave goodbye. My eyes linger on the rings of ghostly white skin, still wrapped from wrist to elbow, left behind by the reaper. It's easy to forget about, most times, but once I start looking it's hard to stop. There's only so much of a mark that death can leave on one person without killing them outright, but the one left on me feels pretty significant. Hard to erase.

I can no longer hear his receding footsteps when I pick the notebook back up. I crack it back open before I can manage to chicken out. It can't be anything that bad.

The space underneath Parker and Early's names is still as blank as before. In fact, the space underneath Laurel's still is as well, which is the biggest surprise. There's something scrawled in the top margin, just one line of hardly legible scrawl. Different than mine but not really, at the end of the day.

 _Learn to let go of this._

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

Celia not being around is weird.

It's a lot of time, to spend around someone only to have her walk out one morning. I'm sure she'll come back at some point, even if it's not permanently, but it's just odd. At this point I'm used to splitting my time between myself and her, and now that that half isn't occupied I'm not sure what to do with myself.

Lyria pesters me long enough that it serves as a distraction, but eventually her and Dorian end up back outside, facing the sea, just like always. Being along with my head isn't something I'm comfortable with yet. There's enough noise coming from the kitchen to indicate that my mom is doing _something_ in the kitchen, whatever it may be. That's where I head, eventually, after spending one too many minutes sitting on the couch staring into nothing more than empty space.

At least Celia was good with distractions. In fact, I'd say random, out of nowhere distractions were her specialty.

She doesn't turn when I walk in but smiles at me when I pull a chair at the table back, settling in. It doesn't look like she's doing much. Re-organizing, maybe. The cupboards are full enough. It looks like the Academy has kept up on their end of the bargain, but with it effectively shut down, I don't know how long the payments will last. No money for being a victor, and once that's cut off...

I really don't want to think about it.

"How are you doing?"

"You asked me this morning."

She smiles again. "I know. I just like checking. You're quiet."

"I was quiet before."

"I know. But before it seemed like you were watching over things, and now it doesn't really seem like that. It doesn't seem like you're looking at anything."

Just staring blankly ahead of of me, trying to unspool my own brain, like I was doing two minutes before I walked in here. For all our struggles, my mother has always been able to read all three of us like an open book. A trait I most definitely did not pick up, judging by how things went in there. Staring blankly ahead since then hasn't done anything for me.

"Mom, it's fine," I sigh. "You don't have to worry."

"But I do. I know you have other people to talk to but— but if you ever want to talk to me, you know I'll listen."

I've always known that, but she's always had bigger issues to deal with. My inconsequential problems have nothing on the problem that is our _entire life_ , and she doesn't need to focus on it when I've always found a way to deal with it myself. There's no way to nicely add more burdens to her already fragile, breakable shoulders.

Besides, I wouldn't even know where to start. At this point, there's a list, and not even Celia can get through it quick enough before more things get added to it.

"I'm surprised you told her," she says quietly, and for a moment I don't have the faintest idea what she's talking about. There's only a handful of conversations Celia and I have had that she's even been privy to that have been outside of a projection screen.

Oh. That's it.

"Well, she asked."

"You've never told anyone before."

"I know. That's why I told her."

I had no idea Celia and I would end up here, when I told her the things I did. It wouldn't have mattered if I knew. At that point she asked and I was desperate to get the information off my chest after carrying it for so long. A name's just that, a name. To most people. To me it's a lot heavier.

"You trust her a lot," she says. "I'm glad."

Having someone like Celia to trust is also worth a lot more than I thought it would be. At the beginning I was just desperate for this to work, and I still am, but our situation is vastly different. I'm sure it came out of left field for my mom, to my siblings. But I've also never really had anything like it before. No one's going to say anything against it.

I'm glad too. It's one of the only things that's really able to pull me out of that blankness.

Mom looks up at the sound of the door opening, conversation safely diverted, and I release a breath. Apparently even talking about it stresses me out.

"Oh," she says quietly, voice almost - confused? A little confused, if anything, but besides that not much else. I swivel in the chair and Celia is looking through the stretch between living room and kitchen, directly at me. She's got a bag slung over her shoulder, only half zipped up. She's only been gone for two hours, tops. It seemed like a lot longer.

I release my breath, and she takes an even bigger one. "Do you mind if I stay here a bit longer?"

 _A bit longer_ sounds a lot like _permanently_ which is worrying, but not for the reason I thought it would be. For how weird it was with her gone for two hours, I'm not opposed to her being here. But she's already back here, for whatever reason. It can't be good.

My mother's smile should be able to buy half the world.

"Give me that," she offers. "I'll put this in Rory's room, because he is taking it back starting now. You can stay for as long as you need to."

No mention of how not great it's going to be on us, trying to feed an extra person, because why would she do that? Celia manages a smile that's far less confident than usual as my mom slips the bag off her shoulder and takes it with her. As soon as it's gone Celia crosses her arms over her chest. Defense mechanism. Walls go back up so much more quickly than the rate at which they fall.

I stand up. "Was it that bad?"

She scratches at the palm of her hand, avoiding my eyes. "I hate my family."

"That's a very stereotypical thing to say."

"Well, they're stereotypically _shitty_ ," she informs me, and doesn't move an inch when I wrap my arms around her. All she does, after a moment, is lean into me just a fraction more than she was before. She's so tense in my arms, a bomb ready to go off, and I'm going to be the shield that takes all of the impact. Better me than the rest of the world.

But that mentality is what got us here, isn't it?

"Don't make me cry."

"You're capable of crying?"

That at least gets a reaction, good or not. I can feel her scowl against my shirt. Apparently it was bad, if she's this closed off, considering tears as a way to get her frustration out. At least that will work.

I know it works.

"Roomies," I mumble into the top of her head. She uncrosses her arms long enough to pinch me in the side, and then tangles her arms around my lower back, hands meeting somewhere in the middle. That's about as good of a Celia reaction that I'm going to get for now, I think.

"Thanks," she whispers.

"Anytime, roomie."

She pinches me again. It's worth it.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

Things aren't as awkward after yesterday as I expected them to be.

If she is feeling awkward about it, Nadir sure hasn't said anything or done a thing to give that away, besides be a tad more quiet than usual. I don't really think Jericho ever really cared what I did to him, same as me. No one else knows. No one else is going to think to question something that they never knew was happening in the first place.

I'm sure someone will wonder where he's gone, eventually. But that's something for a later date.

There's a very probable chance she's pissed at me. It's warranted. What was also warranted, at least to me, was stopping her from getting suckerpunched into next year, which was what was going to happen if I had just stood there. I've been on the receiving end of that, and even so many years younger at the time I understood the weariness in her eyes. What point is there in fighting back if it'll just keep happening? If it'll just get worse if you do?

If she is in fact pissed at me, she hasn't said anything about that either. But I wouldn't expect her to.

I sit down next to her on the couch. Her gaze is fixed firmly on the television, which has been playing nothing but recycled commercials for the past few days. Capitol broadcast systems are still down. No new propaganda to spread, no news. I think _I've_ seen this current one three times now, and I haven't been the one sitting here this entire time.

"How many of these do you have memorized by now?" I ask her, and she rolls her eyes.

"Not as many as I should, for how long I've been sitting here."

She's been sitting here since this afternoon, since Seren knocked on the door. We had both thought the same thing, when we had heard that knock. He's trying it again, with a different tactic. Thane's going to see how far he can get being a little bit more cautious. And it wasn't him, obviously, but every noise we hear has the option to be him, depending on what our brains tell us. Now that it's starting to get dark the thoughts are only going to increase, when we can't see what's outside.

"I feel like I should apologize again."

"You already apologized yesterday," she points out.

"Yeah, I know, but you didn't want either of us to get involved."

"And since when has someone telling you to not get involved ever worked?" she asks, which is probably the most fair thing I've heard in a while. "You jumped out of a building even though everyone was telling you not to because someone offhand mentioned it once."

"It was a little more than offhand."

A lot more than offhand, really, but she levels me with a blank stare. I don't think anyone else would have done it. Celia, _maybe._ Everyone else probably not. It was a good thing it was me, then, or we would've all wound up dead. Sure, we've had to go through some extremely unpleasant things since then, me especially, but it's not so bad at the end of the day.

Maybe I didn't think I would end up here, exactly, but it's not the worst place to end up in.

"You don't have to apologize," she says. "At least now I know that if he does come back there's ways to get rid of him."

"Murder's always a viable option."

She kicks me in the side, cramming me up against the edge of the couch. It was an option for both of us, not that long ago. At least when it came down to it. It's still an option for a lot of people, clearly. Just because we've apparently stopped the child murder every year doesn't mean people are going to cooperate everywhere else. Twelve is apparently proof of that.

I push the rest of her leg off the couch and flop down. She only takes her eyes off the television when the top of my head brushes against her leg.

"You're not staying like that for very long."

"Yeah, well, I sleep here."

"And it's my fault that you came here and are now sleeping on my couch, right? Why don't you go find out where Seren and the other two are sleeping?"

"Because sleeping in the same spot as two Sentinels and my mentor who just finished killing _her_ mentor really makes it easy to sleep at night," I fire back. That's really not it, because I couldn't care less about what the three of them have done combined, but it's not bad here either. Her parents said outright that I could stay here, much to my surprise.

Nadir stares down at me. "She did _what_?"

"Do you seriously not know about that?"

The silence is enough of an answer. I was drugged halfway to hell when Seren decided to share that tidbit of information, so you can only imagine how well my reaction went over. At least that's the explanation for the bandages they took off her back not long after, but it still doesn't help my brain at all. While I was bleeding all over the floor of a hovercraft there were people almost dying elsewhere, too. Dying for good.

"She told me about what happened to Anya, too."

Nadir's already pretty still, and even though it should be difficult for her to go even stiffer she certainly does. I'm not surprised when she doesn't look away from me, though; if I'm learning anything it's that looking away doesn't get you anywhere. Not anywhere fast, anyway.

"The worst part is, I didn't even want to do it," she says. "But I know now that if I hadn't I'd be dead. I wouldn't have made it to day nine."

"Are you sure you're not just giving yourself too little credit?"

"Maybe." She shrugs. "Maybe not. Guess we'll never know."

This wasn't meant to be a guilt trip. I'm just sick and tired of not knowing things, of keeping things from other people. Especially when those things matter so much. All of these secrets nearly killed all of us, in the end, and they were probably meant to.

"I'm not asking you to be sorry about it. I know I'm not."

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, well you're _you._ If you were sorry about it I'd probably go into cardiac arrest."

I smile, and she shakes her head. At least it makes everything feel just a bit better, knowing that there's nothing else. At least not between the two of us. We've still got a ton of shit to unpack, to deal with in the long run. We've still got moments right here and now that are hurting, things that will probably never go away. She still looks troubled, just the slightest bit upset and unsure of how to deal with it.

Like I said. Lots going on.

"I'm sorry about Cade," I say quietly. At least there's something to actually be sorry for, my fault or not. Cicely may have had it coming but Cade definitely didn't. Twelve takes over fifty years to get two victors, and then one of them dies in the streets anyway.

Died in the streets defending Nadir, I've realized. At least he died for something worthwhile.

She shrugs, and her whole body jostles my head a bit, but she doesn't force me off. "It's fine."

It's not fine. But pretending that it is is the first step for a lot of people, and we've all got to start somewhere. No matter what we do from here on out Cade will still be dead and Thane will still be out there somewhere. There's no changing any of that.

But there's things that we _can_ change. I said before I stepped out of that building that I didn't care about anyone else except for the people currently in the room, and myself.

It's a lie, now. It became a lie not a few days after I said it.

If we're going to tell ourselves lies, then they might as well be ones that we don't mind hearing in the end.

* * *

 **Gileon Bracknell, 44 years, Capitol Brigade Captain - Division 784.**

* * *

There hasn't been movement for days.

They had one job, and one job only. Watch the mansion, wait for a surrender. Sit here until that happens. Until that point comes there was nothing else to do, not with the city so quiet. He's never seen it like this.

No one has. The others are wary, for men and women that have guns strapped to their backs, armor protecting them. They're the most fortified people still on these streets and there's good reason to be afraid. Rebellions are usually loud, and impactful, and half the country pays the price for it. Not this one though. This one's different than all the other attempts.

That's probably the reason it worked, he surmises.

But there's nothing. No sign of any life. No raise of a white flag to indicate that Quinn is giving up any time soon. Even through the first few days they could see supplies moving back and forth from the mansion to other places, collecting food and other goods. It's been days since that last happened. What are the chances that all these people make such little noise?

Something's wrong.

He's had too much experience to assume otherwise. They had enough information to assume Quinn would surrender, given enough time to ponder over his options. Either Quinn has pulled something on them or their information was inaccurate.

He's used to going into things not knowing exactly what's going on. That's what he existed for. But the President's gone, and he no longer works for a dead woman.

"Viori, Marston, you're with me," he instructs. "Cervenka, watch our six."

Everyone here knows better than to question him, even if they do look slightly confused. They've hardly moved since they were stationed here - this group and the two others, stationed around the mansion. They've got the best view. If _they_ haven't seen anything, then there's no way any of the others have.

He wished the gun made him feel better. There's an odd, heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach, like his conscience has figured out what's going on long before he has.

The mansion stairs stretch before him, the metal gate creaking in the wind. It swings open at his push, no resistance. He pads carefully through, and then Viori. Marston looks like he's about to throw up, but he's young. There's no way he thought he'd be signing up for this. Despite the feeling in the pit of his stomach, he's not scared. He's waiting for something to happen, waiting for someone to emerge. To tell them to stop before they get any closer.

He hits the bottom of the stairs and starts ascending the second Cervenka's through the gate, gun drawn.

"Something's wrong, sir," Viori says calmly. At least that he can rely on - her certainty. It's the one thing he knows now.

"Marston, try the door," he orders, and he senses the refusal, even though it doesn't come. The doors stretch high above their heads, pristine as always. As cold as all of the people that have lived behind them. Marston puts a hand on the door and pushes, slowly. They all watch as it caves in inch by inch under his hand, open to the world. How long has it been like that, just waiting for them to try?

He leaves Marston at the door, where he'll be safest. Both for him, and anyone that could still be outside. Viori will be the steadiest, an unwavering figure to watch his back.

Not that there's much to watch.

The power is still going strong, the chandelier hanging above their heads sending shattered shards of light onto the wall above his head. It shakes when Marston edges the door closed behind them. Even the smallest of his footsteps echo down the entire hall. If someone hadn't noticed them approaching, surely their presence has been made known now. If there's anyone still around to recognize it, and he's thinking more and more by the second that no one is.

Not everyone could have gone. Quinn could've found a way out, and took those protecting him along. But he wouldn't have bothered taking everyone, and if someone had gotten left behind they would've come out by now.

There's no reason to hide, if they're not guilty of anything.

Viori's starting to creep ahead now, leaving him behind. He'd warn her away from continuing, if he thought there was any active danger.

"Sir," she says, voice abnormally low. If he had been looking her way, he doubts she would have said it at all, preferring to signal him. She's standing in the middle of the next junction, gun raised high. The line of her shoulders is tense, still as a statue.

There's no active danger. He's certain of it. But that still doesn't change the fact that something's wrong.

There's a smear of blood all down the marbled floor, starting from the door just in front of them to the right and continuing all the way down, until it goes out of sight. He can already see it - what looks like two bodies, limp on the floor at the very end. A third's legs, twisted oddly around the corner. The blood goes past the three of them, though. Several days dried. They've been sitting outside this entire time, and didn't hear a peep.

"Stay close," he murmurs, and she nods, gun still raised.

His boots make no imprint in the blood. The bodies are all very pale, the blood drained down, skin almost green. He doesn't know how he didn't notice it before, the smell. It's so strong that it's all he can focus on, now. They're all several days dead.

There's more around the next corner. Six, and then seven, when he catches sight of one sprawled out on the stairs. There's a hole in most of their heads. One, a younger man ten feet away, has such a gaping cavern in his chest that it must've been close. A shotgun blast, maybe. Viori draws the undershirt of her armor up as much as she can over her mouth.

If they had brought Marston in here, he'd have thrown up all over the floor by now.

"None of these are Renatus," she says. Even decomposing he could tell that. Would the president put his own workers to death after they refused to betray him? For some reason he doubts it.

There are other forces at work here, and they scare him. He's not an easily terrified man, but this is unlike anything he's seen before. He wished for so many years that he'd never have the misfortune of seeing something like this with his own two eyes. It feels like he's in a movie, one of those ones that his son seems to watch far too often to be healthy. Massacre isn't something to be talked about lightly, but they're all desensitized to it. He's never blinked an eye at all the kids that die every year - not until now. Not until he was given a way out of it.

He can see the entrance to the main office from here, but doesn't want to look. The door is cracked open. All that's in his view is just a portion of the far wall, and the main planning table. A few chairs.

Innocent enough, if the hallway outside wasn't filled with bodies. If he couldn't see more, down the opposite way.

The door swings in, and he doesn't bother putting the hand back on his gun. For all the blood behind him, the room he's looking at is oddly clean. It looks as if nothing has been touched. All the chairs are neatly tucked in, the wood in the fireplace piled high, ready to be burned.

There's only two things out of place in the room, and even though the level of carnage isn't nearly the same, they're the two worst.

Had he been covered in any more blood, Gileon isn't sure he'd recognize Resani Vaccaro. It almost looks like someone took the time to wipe some of the blood from his face before they left him in the chair at one end of the table. He'd riddled with cuts and open wounds, a torn and bloody wound just above his left ear, out through the other side. That was what killed him, but there were minutes before that. Hours. Days.

Someone took their time with him. Everyone else in this mansion died far before he did.

He forces his eyes away, to Quinn at the other end of the table. He must have been left sitting up, the same way Resani was. After days of decay his body must have finally softened and slumped over, head landing squarely on the table. The bullet hole almost looks exactly the same; through the back instead of the side. There's a piece of paper under his head, thankfully not stained through with blood. When he pulls the former Vice President off the table he doesn't look at the ruin that must be his face. All he has eyes for is the paper. If someone took their time with Resani, then they put almost no thought into this at all. An odd statement, for something so bold.

He may not be able to see Viori's face when she steps into the room, but he knows it's not far from his own. He slowly pulls the paper off the table, even though he can already read it.

 _'COME AND GET US.'_

"They're gone," Viori says, quite obviously. Gone, but where to?

He had known all those years ago that the President was lying, about eradicating the Sentinels. There was no way she'd let people that useful go in one swoop. But he always thought that there would be some level of caution to go along with it. That if she had really brought these monsters inches away from their beds something would be in place to stop them, if they ever came creeping out.

Of course they'd destroy their creators. The Capitol took their lives and ruined every inch of them. Gileon doesn't think he can blame them for that; anyone in their situation would do the same. They spent years training to lull people into a false sense of security before they slit them open from nape to spine. How could anyone be surprised, if they finally turned on the people who had taught them how to do it?

This wasn't just a sick vendetta, though. They would've opened the front doors themselves and killed as many of them as they could, before they went out themselves.

If this was just a vendetta, it would already be over.

His fist slowly crumples the paper into a ball. Lots of people have vendettas, and it never goes this far. Revenge can only go to so many lengths, before it grows old. Before the person exacting it grows tired.

This is the furthest thing from a vendetta.

It's a challenge.

* * *

These chapters are getting longer again and I have like negative four desire or energy to edit them in their entirety. I'm skimming at best.

Hope that school's going alright, for everyone that went back.

Until next time.


	46. Cancel The Apocalypse

District Seven; edges of Wolf Creek.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

There's no telling exactly what the cause is, but I think talking to Evie is letting me sleep easier.

The whole surrounding area is just as quiet as it is before, and I don't think I've gotten used to it again. There's still the very soft footsteps of my parents outside the door every once in a while, the creaking of the floor as they come and go.

That can all still set my nerves alight, and there's only one thing that's really changed, since I first got back, and it's her.

Lydia was right, about all of it. I think talking has helped Evie too, even if she hasn't realized it as quickly as I have. Just having someone to vent to about all of this was probably going to do wonders no matter who it is, but it's the fact that it's someone who really gets it. She doesn't seem very willing to go too deep into how I'm feeling about all of this for fear of upsetting me, but we're past that point. If she needs to get things out then so do I, at some point.

But this is one of the few times I'm not sleeping, for one reason or another. The curtains aren't closed - the light of the moon fully illuminating the floor and the opposite wall. Maybe that's it. I throw aside the blankets and crawl to the end of the bed. I should be able to reach it from there. No reason to get out of a perfectly good bed if I don't have to.

There's movement outside the window, facing back towards the woods. The car we took here has been parked back there for days, hidden from sight from anyone who happens to pass by. Since then Meritt and Kane have been content to stay back there, or hidden in other spots where no one's going to come across them. Probably for the best. They've left me alone, apparently satisfied that I'm keeping herself safe.

There's nothing in those outer fringes but them. What little I can see of both of them sitting in the front seats is different than the few other times I've looked. They've got a radio suspended between them. Meritt almost looks tense, if that's even the right word, and Kane looks outright concerned. They're talking to _someone_ , then. It's not good news.

They were told before they all got split up that if anything happened, they'd know. As soon as the Vice President surrendered the information would be available to them.

What I'm seeing now cannot be that. If it was that, they'd look happy. Relieved.

Not worried.

I abandon the blankets with a mournful sigh and grab a sweater. If it's something bad, no way I'm letting them keep it from me. That's not how it works.

I unlock the front door as quietly as possible and creep around the edge of the house. The second I'm even in sight Meritt's head snaps up to look at me. Kane only spares me a glance before he's back to talking to whoever's on the other end. I walk right up to the car, feet sinking into the soft, cool grass, and neither of them even bother moving.

I wrench open the door. Kane turns around for another split second.

"—no, it's fine. Tanis is here."

"What's going on?" I ask. Neither of them answer me. Why did I get out of bed? It's chilly, and I'm not wearing any shoes. It's not like my flimsy pajama pants are doing wonders against the breeze either.

"Yeah, I got it," Kane continues. "When do you want us there?"

"You guys are leaving?" I question. Meritt gives me a look that's probably about the silent equivalent to _shut up_ , but they never told me I had to listen to him. It would probably be in my best interest, knowing him, but it wasn't a rule. Just a guideline.

 _Two days_ , someone on the other end says. A female voice. Seren's probably the only one I'd recognize, and it's not her. It has to be one of the others, but there's no telling exactly who. That still doesn't really explain the widespread concern that has filled the car and is now leaking into the air around me. The longer I stand here the more worried I get. I'm also getting more annoyed by the lack of explanation.

He flicks the radio off.

"What's happening?" I repeat.

"Something not great."

"No shit," I fire back. "What exactly?"

"Vice President's dead," Kane answers. " _Everyone's_ dead. The soldiers surrounding the mansion finally moved in a few hours ago, but we knew that. Everyone who was in there has been dead for a few days, by the looks of it."

I'm trying to ignore the fact that they knew that this was happening all along and didn't tell me, because that'll only make it worse. By the look of it they just got more information piled on now that apparently made the situation worse. I didn't think, before right now, that hearing something like that could get any worse. Their faces are making re-think it.

"You said there were people protecting him," I say to Meritt. "So where were they?"

"The real question is where they are _now_ ," Meritt says. "After they killed them all."

I blink at him for a few seconds, feeling very much like an idiot. At least as close as I can humanly get. Isn't the purpose of protection to you know, protect? Not murder?

Apparently not to them.

"They were supposed to protect him," I say. I still feel dumb.

"Just like we were all "supposed to be dead" five years ago?" Meritt asks. "Right."

Should I just assume that everything is backwards, in their world?

"So what now?"

"We're leaving," Kane explains. "We have to figure out where they are. People have already been searching the Capitol for hours, but I don't think there's any point. No chance in hell that any of them are still there. They may have killed twenty-seven people but believe me when I say it could've been triple the amount and it still would have happened the same way. We need to find them before they do anything else."

"Well, where could they have ended up?"

"One or Two, if they were going on foot. Three if they were pushing it. They could've hit the edges of Seven by now but that's far from any civilization, so I'm doubting it."

They're headed towards people, then. Towards wherever they can cause the most destruction. Twenty-seven people wasn't enough. The others may not have taken Blair back to Two but Dimara's in One all by herself, because they thought she could handle it. And look what's happened since then. We should've had someone there all along. I didn't need protecting here, I never did.

"You need to find a way to get a hold of someone in One," I tell them. "If they really are there, she needs warning. You can't leave her alone in there."

They're both looking at me now, silent. I should've known. It was so stupid to assume that all of this was over, that we were safe. It was never going to be that easy. Everything else we've done so far hasn't mattered.

I can see it in both of their eyes. They know things I was hoping I would never have to. I think both of them right now are able to imagine exactly what could happen, if we don't intervene in this before it gets even more out of hand than it already is. Twenty-seven people is nothing, in the grand scheme of a country that killed twenty-four kids every year anyway.

"You know who they are," I say. "You know exactly who they are, and maybe you thought not telling us would help. Maybe you thought that if we didn't know we wouldn't have to get involved. But we already are. If we hadn't gotten out of the arena then none of this would have happened. They wouldn't have killed all of those people and they wouldn't be out there right now. It's on us as much as it's on you."

My mother has fear in her eyes for a reason when she looks at me. It's not because she's scared of me, it's because she was scared of what was to come next.

"You need to get a hold of her," I repeat. "You need to get a hold of _everyone._ And if you're leaving, I'm coming with you."

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

I have never once in my life been woken up by the phone ringing.

Only about half the District probably owns one. The other half either doesn't have the financial means to keep one up and running, or doesn't have a use for it. Kali's father only keeps one to deal with his business, which means that it's ringing off the hook between noon and five every other day.

Never in the evening. Never at _three in the morning_.

It's out in the hall, outside his office. No way in hell anyone's going to get up from the opposite side of the house to come and get it, and Kali's not moving. She's starting to move, grumbling under her breath, but I'm the one that's properly awake. Besides, the last time that phone rang it was news from Two, and I had nearly missed it. I can't imagine if I had.

I half fall out of the bed and make my way out into the hallway, not impressed by the predicament in the slightest. The phone is half an inch from falling right off the table, probably from Isolde walking around at the pace of a hurricane and not giving a care in the world for what she hits on the way through. It's still ringing shrilly by the time I get there, threatening to go over.

"Hello?" I manage, sounding about half-alive. It's a high bar to get to, when you've seen and been through everything I have the past few days.

"Dimara? Wow, I did not think that would work at all. Phones are alright."

I've also never really properly used this exact phone besides that one particular time, so when it presumably gets ripped out of what almost sounds like _Tanis'_ hands I hear it loud as day.

"Give it back," comes a voice that surprisingly isn't all that irritated. "Are you sitting down?"

"No? Who is this?"

"Kane. Go sit down."

"Was that Tanis?"

No answer. I slip back into our room and close the door. Kali still hasn't moved, but she cracks an eye open when I sit back down on the bed instead of returning to my previous spot.

"Are you sitting?"

"I _was_ sitting before my sleep was so rudely interrupted."

I can hear the hesitance on the other end, the held breath. It can't be that bad. It cannot possibly be any worse than me having to attend a funeral early this morning for someone who shouldn't have died in the first place.

"Is everyone alright?"

"So far," he replies. "Have you seen anything suspicious in One lately?"

"Suspicious as in a building on fire or suspicious as in a person who should be dead walking around?"

A sigh. "Suspicious as in a group of people that have come to take over and kill everyone who tries to stop them."

"I'm not gonna lie," I say. "I haven't exactly been looking."

I don't think I would have to look to notice something quite like that, though. The way he said it indicates it's a lot more specific than anything else he's said so far. No one just calls in the middle of the night to say something like that, especially after telling me a few seconds earlier to make sure I was sitting down. God, what now? And why couldn't someone just leave me out of it?

I told Ivory I would do something, if shit went down again. That's why.

"Quinn didn't surrender," I guess.

"Quinn didn't surrender because he's dead," Tanis says, loud enough that I can hear her this time. I'm left to stare at my own reflection in the mirror that's hanging on the opposite wall. My face twists into a very obvious frown. I can also see Kali starting to stir even further, probably wondering what in the fresh hell I'm still doing up. I should've hung up by now.

"He's dead?" I ask. Apparently repeating it will help it get through. In the mirror, Kali sits up.

"Who's dead?" she asks.

"He's dead, along with everyone else who was still with him," Kane explains. "The people who were protecting him—"

"Are no longer protecting him, I assume?"

"You assume right. Issue is, we have no idea where they are now."

"So what do you want me to do?" I ask. Obviously it's something, or they wouldn't have bothered figuring out how to call in the first place. There's something I can do, there's always something. Even if it seems futile as long as I'm moving I'll feel like I have a sense of purpose. If the whole country is going up in flames, and it's not just reserved to One, then I need to.

Kane doesn't really seem to know what to say, though. Maybe he didn't think past the part where he told me all of this. Knowing her, Tanis probably forced him into this in the first place.

"D, what's wrong?" Kali asks quietly. I reach back and grab her hand, squeezing tight. To think I was just getting used to falling asleep next to her again, now that I wasn't worried about one or both of us dying. She squeezes back, eyes still concerned. Right now, if Kane's right, then nothing's going to happen to us, to me, if I stay right where I am. But we both know I can't do that.

It sounds like there's another fight on the opposite end. There's more rustling and then Tanis' exasperated huffing.

"They're all meeting up in two days," she tells me. It sounds like someone's still fighting her for the phone. "They won't tell me _where,_ but I also told them that if they tried to leave without me I'd hang off the bottom of the truck until they stopped."

"What about everyone else?"

"We're working on it. You're the first one we got through to, it's just a lot. And I was hoping you'd help."

The scuffle on the other end has finally stopped. She doesn't just mean help as in getting in contact with the others. She means help as in asking if I'm gonna be waiting at the fence-line for whoever makes the move to come get me first.

"You don't know where they are, Tanis."

"We just spent an hour trying to find out how to get through to you. Audrel's got a lot of contacts set up from Twelve, but - but something happened, in that hour. They lost contact with Two."

I must go awfully blank, because Kali squeezes my hand again. The only reassurance I'm given from that is that at least I know Blair didn't wind up back there.

"And I mean everything, Dimara," Tanis continues. "Everyone they were talking to before went radio silent. All the victors, all the Peacekeeper's, Seren's family. Unless it was some random coincidence—"

"It wasn't."

"None of us think so, either. So if it's not a coincidence, then we think they headed there. Two's been our main line of defense since the Dark Days settled. If they were looking to hunker down somewhere that's a pretty good spot. They used to live on the edge, too, coming from the Sentinels. They know everything there. They'd know exactly how to cut the whole District off from the rest of the country."

Luca made everything sound so simple, so cookie-cutter. Kill the President, find allies everywhere, control the Districts.

Wait for a surrender that will never come.

That's one District lost, maybe never to be found again. One's not far from there. If no one takes Two back from them, then they'll keep moving. Keep crushing everything else in their path beneath their feet like it never stood in the first place.

It can't happen. I said it wouldn't. It's not just for me. It's for Kali and for this family and for Royal, and for the nine of us that survived.

I take a deep breath. "So who do you want me to get a hold of?"

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

Hollis makes too much noise for it to be unavoidable.

My parents both left for work before the sun even rose, and the second they leave Hollis sees it fit to terrorize my house, now that they're not around to be freaked out by her. It's hard to be freaked out by her, when I think about everything else.

So when she goes quiet, I notice.

It's still dark in the house. The sun probably won't be up for another hour. Karsi's still asleep in the armchair near the door, but Hollis, who had been eating a granola bar loudly enough to wake the dead, is now completely silent.

In fact, she's not even in the house.

So, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that something's probably wrong. It just depends on what, exactly. There's a few options. Somebody was doing something weird outside and she wanted in. She went off in search for more food, after I told her to quit it. I feel like even then I would still manage to hear her, halfway across the District.

The door bangs open so hard that it slams into the side of Karsi's chair and sends her skidding half a foot to the left.

Hollis points an accusatory finger at me. "You. Are you still limping?"

"No?"

She gives me a thumbs up, and heads back out the door. It remains wide open as she steps back out into the street, holding onto a radio in one hand. Karsi gives me a look, now fully awake.

"What's happening?"

She shrugs, and clambers over the edge of the chair, chasing down the stairs after her. I sit there with my spoon still hanging out of my mouth, unsure about what I'm supposed to do. Maybe I would be more concerned, if Hollis didn't always move around like she was in the mood to knock something over. But why the question, then? That's the worrying bit in the middle of all of that.

Outside, the car starts. I get up and head outside.

Hollis is already sitting in the front seat. Karsi's standing outside it, frantically pulling at the door handle like it's not working. All Hollis does in response is roll the window down, and then stick herself so far out of it I'm surprised she doesn't fall into the road.

She looks right at me. "We're going to Two. You staying here?"

"What?"

" _Hollis_ ," Karsi scolds. "You can't just say that to someone without explaining. You should've let Dimara talk to him."

"That was Dimara?" I ask. "Why, what's happening?"

"Shit's going down in Two, and apparently Tanis and Dimara are pretty adamant about not getting left at home. They got a hold of Nine and Four already. It's kind of touching that you all have so little self-preservation instincts when it comes to each other ."

"What kind of shit?"

"Get in the car and I'll tell you."

Why am I already heftily considering it? Scratch that, why do I already feel like I've decided? You can't just spring this on any normal person and get them to agree to it like it's an every day thing. But Hollis wouldn't lie about whatever's going on. And if they've managed to convince _Rooke_ to go then how the hell am I supposed to stay here?

I can't.

"Stay here," I instruct, and when I head back into the house Hollis is still grumbling under her breath.

Either way I end up dead after this. Either I die because of whatever's going on in Two or I die when I get back here and my parents lock me in the basement. They're going to get home and I'll just be gone, and when I'm not back when the sun goes down they're going to lose it. Realistically, everyone's going to lose it. I can't just vanish into thin air, especially if there's a chance that I'm not coming back. Even with no explanation I feel like it's a very real possibility.

I haven't touched the backpack since the day I got back and shoved it under there. I don't even really remember what's in there, if I'm being honest, except the hilt of the sword that's still sticking out.

It's like I knew this was going to happen. Any person so grateful to be back home would have just gotten rid of it.

I'm glad I didn't.

By some miracle Hollis hasn't actually left me behind. She does eye the backpack with a growing amount of suspicion as I clamber into the backseat.

"Okay, pause for a second. You need to drop me off somewhere, and then—"

"We don't have time for this."

"I have to tell someone," I insist. "And once you drop me there head to the victor's village. I'll meet you there."

" _Why_?"

"Because if this is so bad that it's going to take an entire car ride to explain, then are the twelve of you and the nine of us going to be enough? Probably not."

I also don't know if we'll even be able to get anyone in the victor's village to come with us, but it's worth a shot. And if everyone else does the same, then the numbers will add up. We'll have enough manpower, theoretically, to deal with whatever this is. It also means risking a hell of a lot more people, but we're all dead anyway, if there's not enough of us in the first place. The twelve of them might basically be soldiers, but the nine of us aren't. The nine of us are only going because we don't know how to sit at home anymore, and we all know that.

"Tell me where to go," Hollis says.

It's a good thing it's still dark. If there were any more people than maybe half a dozen on the streets, Hollis would surely hit someone without a shred of remorse, if they got in her way. The few that are out all pause, at the speed of the car, at the noise in the normal peaceful twilight hours. The buildings and the factories all go flying by as nothing more than gray and brown blurs, gone the second we pass by them.

I may not be limping anymore, but it also feels like I can't really breathe properly. All of this before just to wind up doing something else stupid. Who would have thought?

Everyone that knows me, if I'm being honest.

The shops and factories are starting to turn into quaint little houses, full of people that sleep in until the sun comes up, but not today.

"Here's good," I announce, and the car slams to a halt so fast I nearly go tumbling headfirst into the front. If anyone in this area was asleep before, then they definitely aren't now. Not with this racket.

"You've got twenty minutes," Hollis tells me. "If you don't show up before then, I'm leaving you here."

"Got it." Twenty minutes really isn't a lot. It'll take me maybe ten minutes to get to the village from here. Eight, possibly, if I don't stop sprinting, but who knows if my leg can handle that yet. Running full speed and not limping are very different things right now.

That means, to be safe, I've got eight or nine minutes to convince Emmett that I don't in fact need to be put into a mental asylum.

Front doors a no go. His parents are worse than mine by a mile. It's usually Aubrey that gets coerced into hauling herself up on top of the little overhang underneath his bedroom window, because I'm still convinced that thing is bound to collapse any day now. But she's not here right now, because there's no way in hell her or Pax would let me go either.

Emmett's going to kill me for this.

I grab the overhang and start pulling myself up. The whole thing creaks under my weight. I can already see movement coming from his room - between this noise, and the car that's already receded into the distance, I'm not surprised.

He opens the window before I'm even fully up, and doesn't attempt to help me in the slightest. "What the hell are you doing? It's six in the morning."

"Gotta tell you something," I say, panting, as I fully haul myself over the edge. It shakes when I flop down on top of it, and I grab the windowsill.

Just in case.

"I'm leaving," I say, because Emmett's sure not saying anything. "There's something happening in Two, and I really don't have any time to explain. Hell, I don't even know."

"Are you insane?" he interrupts. There it is. If I could go a full week without someone questioning my sanity, it would be nice.

"I had to tell someone—"

"Why do you still have that sword?" he asks incredulously. Right. Forgot no one has any clue about that beside me. I'm pretty sure even my parents assume I got rid of it at some point, if they even ever noticed I brought it in the house in the first place. I should've been timing myself. I don't know how many minutes I have, and it looks like if I had a hundred years Emmett would still not be able to wrap his brain around this.

"Someone needed to know," I say. "My parents wouldn't let me go. Aubrey and Pax wouldn't either, you know that."

"I don't want this responsibility."

"It's not a responsibility. I just needed someone to know, in case—"

In case I wind up dead, is what I find I can't say. Emmett knows it too. I feel like if it goes that south, it really won't matter. Maybe all of us will be dead, if whatever this is doesn't work. Maybe all the manpower in the world won't be enough, but I don't know that. I don't know anything.

"You're not gonna die."

He doesn't know that, but I don't either. I can't argue with him.

"Nothing's going to happen to you," he says. I don't know who he's trying to convince, at this point.

"It if does, just make sure everyone's safe. That's all I want."

It's really not right to ask him of that, or anyone for that matter, but someone has to. We all know the truth, that Aubrey and Pax couldn't handle this. Emmett's parents, like I said, are worse than mine. He gets not telling them things - he does it all the time.

"I gotta go, alright?" I tell him. "Just promise me."

It takes him a second. I'm already sliding myself back to the edge of the overhang when he grabs my arm. My legs are already dangling over. The second he lets go of my arm really is the last second he's going to have, because then I'll be over. There's a lot of weight in that single second, but I can't tell what he's thinking. All I'm thinking about is how much time I have left to run.

"You're not going to die," he repeats again, slower this time. If there really are any Gods out there, then hopefully they hear his words and take notice of them. I don't think anything he says could really save me, if that's what's fated to happen, but you never know.

Stranger things have happened.

"I hope not," I respond, and manage a smile.

He lets me go, and I hit the ground with a thud. I should probably wave, or smile again. Offer any sort of reassurance.

But nothing comes out.

He leans back in, and closes the window. I can still see him through the other side, staring downwards, but that's the end of it. There's nothing else either of us could say. Our second has passed.

I adjust the straps of the backpack, the weight settling more comfortably against my back, and start running.

Someone has to listen to that advice, eventually.

* * *

 **Ashlar Vikken, 38 years, Victor of the 140th Hunger Games.**

* * *

He hasn't seen someone leave their house in days.

It's not like that's an unusual thing for some of them. Nyro and Odisus are both getting up there, and sometimes they just don't bother leaving for a few days. Somewhere in those days one of them will go check up on them, and they'll be fine, and that's just how it goes.

Vella hates the world, or so she says, and Telrin never really talked in the first place. It's the lack of Caelie and Alekina that really sticks out, because those two have been stuck to each other's sides since Alek got back and they got together. It hasn't faded in all the years since then. For them to not be out, it means that one or both of them is sick and the other won't go anywhere alone, or something else is wrong.

All the power went out in the house not long ago. He _knows_ something's wrong. There had almost been flickers of a broadcast before the screen had gone dark, something that had happened in the Capitol.

Before, something happening in the Capitol hardly qualified as news at all. Now that's all everyone's been waiting for, and they don't even get to see it.

Valerie's lighting candles in the living room. He's not quite sure how his wife can maintain such a calm and unaffected aura even now. Maybe it's having two daughters, but he still stresses about that every other hour, it seems like. She never has.

"You can't get a hold of Seren?" she asks quietly. There's a thin line of smoke trailing up from the match and into the air above her head; she blows it out.

"Phone lines are down too, at least in this area. There's no way to get a hold of anyone."

Seren would never leave him in the dark if something was going on. Would she? After all, she did so many things over four and a half years that she dropped on him, practically all at once, when she got back. She's done things he would have never expected.

He knows why Cicely didn't come back to Two, even if she won't tell him.

She made this place a lot louder, and it was fitting. Two has never been a quiet place, not since he got back. Everything always seems so loud, and right now he can hear every single breath he's taking. The quiet conversations of Krista and Liana, just up the stairs. Valerie leans against his side and he wraps an arm around her waist, letting the chair hold the weight of them both.

"Do you think she'll come back?"

"If I had to put money on it? Probably not. Family aside I don't think Seren ever wanted to be here in the first place."

He wishes, currently, that he could be anywhere else too. Grab Valerie and the girls and just disappear until this all blew over. For all the front they're putting up, the tension in the air is palpable.

Two's only so loud because there's so many people coming and going, dying or not.

"I'm gonna go check on Nyro," he says quietly. "I won't be long."

She nods, and kisses him on the cheek before she pulls back. He needs something to do, something to keep him occupied.

Valerie's walked no more than five feet away when he starts to hear it.

Liana and Krista stop talking. After a moment Liana pokes her head around the top of the stairs, looking around curiously. He's only half out of the chair, hand still braced against the table. At first he thought he was imagining it, a quiet buzzing just behind his ears, but it's steadily growing stronger. Like the sound of a hovercraft taking off, except louder, more powerful.

"Is that a jet?" Liana asks, confused. No one's flown a jet over Two in a dozen years. Or anywhere, for that matter. There's no reason for it. They've all grown used to the sounds of a hovercraft traveling overhead, an every day occurrence.

He doesn't stop moving for the front door. He can almost sense Valerie reaching out for him, but can't tell why.

He wrenches it open, and steps onto the front porch. The railing shakes under his hand, trembling like someone's shaking it back and forth. He can hear the dishes rattling in the cupboard from the kitchen. A glass tips off the counter and smashes onto the floor.

It's not off in the distance. It's nothing more than a sleek, gray mark in the sky, and then it goes shooting right over his head, the noise so deafening he can't even hear his own thoughts. It _is_ a jet. He follows it with his eyes, as it travels the whole length of the victor's village and then continues on further into the District. It's the harsh sound of something slicing through the air that keeps his attention, even as it fades away.

Military grade jet, brought up from Two's storage. Armed and loaded and ready to turn anything in front of it into ash, if that's what the person behind the wheel wants.

A truck drives up to the gates.

He almost misses it, the loud crunch of the gravel underneath the wheels. It stops a foot away from the gate, the very much _open_ gate. It's too far away for him to go and shut it, but what good would it do?

And why is he so terrified?

"What's going on?" Valerie asks. She's come up behind him now and is trying to lean around him, trying to see. He holds out an arm to block her, trying to push her back, but he needs to look too. It's hard to focus on any one thing. He can see Liana and Krista standing in the entryway too, and he wants to yell at them to go inside, but any ounce of noise is attention drawn.

The passenger door opens, and someone jumps out.

He has no idea who it is. A woman younger than him, sleek, blonde, both hands gripping at the edges of an assault rifle, making it look light as a feather.

That's what snaps him out of it.

"Take the girls, go into the basement, lock yourselves in the cellar."

"And what about you?" Valerie's asking so many questions, and he can't make her move fast enough. It's different than the other questions, calm and rational and patient. Now she sounds angry, and horrified. He can feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins, but this isn't the Games, and adrenaline's not going to save him. Not from that. That's nothing that looks you in the face in the Games.

True to course, the woman looks right at him.

He shoves Valerie back in the house, and she finally grabs both of the girls, headed for the stairs. It feels like someone has pushed their hands out of the earth to lock them around his ankles, keeping him there. Cicely, maybe. Getting back at him for bringing Seren back, getting back at him for not being there when she was dying, and he'll never know how it happened now.

She cocks her head a little bit, no smile, analyzing.

A predator trying to figure out where her prey is going to go, when he's looking death in the face.

* * *

Is this the last reference to another movie or TV show? Probably not, considering the whole story's named after one.

Anyway, I told you I'd get this plot somewhere eventually. I just never said it would be good.

Until next time.


	47. Rewrite The Story

District Ten; Hearne Hill.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

I've never felt so stupid in my entire life.

I'm thirteen years old. Fourteen, almost. Who knows if I'll live to see that, now. This is supposed to be the good time of year, when the Games are over and people are starting to forget about the atrocities that happened with my birthday two weeks away.

Nothing like that is going to happen this year, apparently.

I can't explain the relief that I felt, when I heard Dimara's voice. It was a shock to the system, something that finally pulled me out of the slump that I've been in for most of the past few days. After that it quickly turned to dread, and then horror. Apprehension, once I realized exactly what was being asked of me. They would never force me to go. In fact, I think some of them would prefer if I stayed home. I'm a liability, arguably the most fragile one. Definitely the smallest. But it's not a question, not once I find out that they're all going. It's just a matter of how.

I've been as quiet as possible. Packed a few changes of clothes into a bag, brought a few snacks just in case. I managed to creep out the back door when no one was looking. I'm not about to announce to my entire family what's happening, or ask permission. It won't happen.

There's also the issue of me not exactly knowing where Linnet or Orick are. If they even know. I haven't seen them the past day. Last I talked to them they were sticking closer to the center of the District, waiting for any news from the Capitol.

But no one's heard anything. Not until now.

So that's where I start heading. Backpack on, hood so far over my head and face that I can hardly see. I don't want anyone looking at me and asking what I'm doing. Even worse, I don't want someone recognizing me. I know Fletcher's out, at least. If he catches me doing this I'm dead. He'll drag me back kicking and screaming to mom and dad and not hesitate for a second. My safety may be their priority, but it's not mine. This is the most alive, the most confident I've felt since I've been back. Right now it feels like I know what I'm doing, even if it's the opposite. I'm looking for two people that could be anywhere, avoiding the crowd, eyes fixed on the ground. Possibly headed to a District where things could go so terribly that there's no going back.

We crossed that line a while ago, though. I said I was unwilling to go back to the girl I was before, and that was the truth.

The truth remains that there was only one time that I felt like I had the possibility to be someone better, and that time was the worst of my life, and also the best.

There are never very many cars in Ten. A lot of tractors. A few buggies that look half a century old. Some people just ride around on horses right through the middle of town, and no one bats an eye. If they're around here, they'll stick out like a sore thumb, surely, even if they're not trying.

Unless they already knew. Unless they're already left without me, because why bothering asking a thirteen year old to go into war?

I'm not willing to confront that possibility yet.

I can imagine it, though. Slinking back into my house, and getting caught. Dad asking what the hell I'm doing. Mom crying once I tell her. Clarissa and Sam will both get upset and then Fletcher will get back and all hell will break loose.

Not something I want to happen.

"Kelsea?"

My foot hits a bump in the road, and I stumble quite gracelessly to a halt. Not Fletcher's voice, which is a relief, but still someone who recognizes me. I know exactly who it is, even without turning around. I don't think I _should_ turn around.

"Kelsea?" Ada repeats, and I take a very deep breath. Release it slowly. Head high, paint a smile on, absolutely do not get angry.

I turn around. There's no way my smile doesn't look forced, because _it is._

"Hey," I say.

"You're back!" she says. If my smile is forced, then I'm sure her cheer is too.

"Yep," I respond. "But you knew that."

Her smile crumbles, just a little bit. I think I also should have reminded myself to not be bitter about this, either, but I don't even know if saying it would have done any good. Some things are just harder to hold back than others.

"Right," she agrees, and smiles again. "I've just, we've been busy, you know. Eliza and me. Are you looking for someone?"

The second she starts talking, about things that probably aren't true to begin with, I find myself scanning over her shoulder. There are a lot of people around. She was probably just stepping out of her family's shop. I didn't mean to zone out so quickly, but she's really not important right now. If she didn't bother to come around then I'm not going to waste time on her now.

"Kels?" she repeats.

"Sorry, what?"

"Who are you looking for?"

"Have you seen, like, a Peacekeeper car, but not? And two people probably lurking around it?"

Her eyes suddenly turn very fearful. This should be the summer, I remind myself. A happy, joyful time. Hours filled with us laughing and running around and forgetting about everything else. It shouldn't be like this. The sweltering heat is the only thing that's constant, but I feel ice cold.

"Dad says he thinks they're Sentinels," she says quietly, like she's afraid they're going to pop out of the bushes and grab her. "Just the way they act. They just showed up out of nowhere, too."

"Yeah, because they brought me back, but it's not like you'd know that," I tell her, a little harshly. "Where are they?"

I've never seen her look so alarmed in her life. Them calling my name at the reaping is a very close second, but right now she doesn't look scared for me. She looks like she's scared _of_ me, which doesn't really make sense. As if I'd ever hurt her, as if I'd ever have any involvement in something like that. Regardless of what's happened since I got back, or the lack thereof, it would never happen.

"What do you want, Kelsea?" she whispers. "Why do you want to talk to them?"

"What do I _want_?" I echo, the latter half already completely forgotten. I know I sound angry now, but I can't help it. "I want a sense of normalcy back. I want to not think about everything that happened _constantly_. I want friends that actually care when I come back instead of running in the opposite direction, and I want all of this to be over. Most of all I just want to never look back at who I was before all of this, but I can't do that because everyone feels the need to remind me the second I look them in the eye."

It's a lot to come out all at once. It's definitely the longest sentence I've managed, in the past few days. Ada swallows, her arms wrapped tight around herself. I can't tell whether it feels like a weight being lifted off my chest or like it's getting worse.

I'm sure I'll find out.

Ada is very studiously examining the dirt between her sandals. I should probably say something else. Something along the lines of _I'm really not as angry as I seem_ , but I can't quite tell if that's the truth yet.

Maybe I'll know if I do all this. Maybe once it's properly over I'll figure it out.

But it's not going to happen right now.

"They've been camping out behind the Justice Building," she says under her breath, after a long moment of silence. "But you didn't hear that from me."

I nod, and turn back around. I'm not three steps away when she lunges forward and takes a hold of my arm. That blinding concern is back all over her face, but this time she actually looks me in the eye. That's a step in the right direction.

"Be careful," she pleads, and I nod again. I have to be, not just for me, but for everyone back here. For everyone I'll be meeting again soon.

She almost takes that one last step forward to hug me. I can see the conflict warring inside of her. To everyone else it would just be a stupid, simple goodbye hug. Similar to the one she gave me at the goodbyes, but with more weight.

I won't make her decide on that now. That's something she has to figure out on her own, just like me.

And hopefully, for both of our sake's, we'll have a lot more time to figure it out.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

Unfortunately for me, I do not make it out of the house unscathed.

I think it has something to do with the fact that I was so panicked that I tripped in the hallway, knocked over a table and then a picture frame off the wall, and had Beckett looking at me in the next second. In those few seconds he was looking at me I had realized, with a stunning amount of clarity, that I had absolutely no story planned. No reasoning for why I was leaving the house.

"What are you doing?" he had asked, clearly confused. Not suspicious. Not yet anyway.

I don't think my response of _nothing_ had helped. Other things that hadn't helped: me quickly skirting around him, leaving the table lying on it's side on the ground, and nearly falling down the front stairs in my haste to get away from him before he asked me anything else.

I make it ten feet. Beckett literally grabs the collar of my shirt and nearly strangles me when I go airborne for a split second.

" _Where_ are you going?"

"Nowhere?" I try, which I already know he's not going to believe. At least I tried.

How concerned is everyone going to be, when I don't shown up? Immensely, I reckon. Forcible confinement from my brother is not going to be an easy thing to get out of.

"I just wanna know what you're doing, alright?" he says. "It's fine. I won't freak out."

Well, this is going to be a shock, then.

"Well," I start. "I'm meeting up with Fenton, and then I'm getting in the car and meeting everyone else in Two, because someone killed the Vice President and all of his remaining allies and now that's where they are. Supposedly, anyway. I'm going off the words of some very sketchy people, but I don't think they're that bad. Fenton's not anyway."

Beckett didn't blink once the whole time I was speaking. I can only imagine how badly his eyes hurt.

"Beck?" I try.

"No."

"You said you wouldn't freak out," I insist.

"This isn't me freaking out. This is me being a logical human being. You really thought you'd tell me and I would just let you go? Mom and Dad would kill me."

"Who said you could stop me?"

Okay, so maybe Beck's a few inches taller and definitely a lot heavier, after all of this. So he theoretically, totally could stop me. But if he really wants to he's going to have to tackle me into the grass and pin me down on our front lawn until someone else gets home, because I'll struggle the whole time until then. I'm not going to make it easy on him.

"Just - just think about this for a second, alright?" he asks. "You said everyone. So a group of Sentinels, a few trained Careers, and the other four people all of whom have at least killed someone. So what are you going to do?"

"That was extremely uplifting, Beck, I really appreciate that."

"I'm just saying, you're trying to leave right now to go join up with a pack of literal murderers. There's no way in hell."

"That _pack of murderers_ is the reason I'm alive," I fire back. "You realize that right? Say whatever you want about how you think I could've survived on my own out there, but I wouldn't have. I know that. I know a lot of things you don't. You don't actually _know_ what would have happened to me, you don't know anything about who they actually are."

"I know that two of them killed some of your allies, and the others aren't much better. You're not like them, Rooke, you're a good person, and—"

"I'm a good person?" I question. "Are you _serious_? Is that because I didn't kill anyone, or because you're just trying to get me to stay here?"

"That's not what I meant."

"No, it is. And you think I'm a good person, but I'm not. You wanna know why? Because if Rory had let go of me on the ninth day I probably would have tried to kill him. All he did after that was apologize and give me space and try to convince me that he was someone I could trust, and he _is_. They all are. He's not a bad person just because he killed someone who happened to be my ally. That's not how it works."

"That still doesn't mean you going with them make sense," Beckett says.

"I am not a good person," I insist. "You know, the night before launch, I was laying in bed and I looked up at the ceiling and I wondered to myself, _why didn't Beckett volunteer for me_? And the second I thought it I hated myself. But I still thought it. I couldn't take it back. There was a genuine second of my life where I wished you were the one about to die instead of me."

All the things that could have come out, and I think that's the one thing that had the power to surprise him. I would never want anything bad to happen to him, but that kind of thing you can't take back no matter what you do.

"I don't want anything bad to happen to you," he says quietly. "After all of this, if we lose you..."

"You were already prepared to lose me," I whisper.

He won't take me to the ground to stop me if I walk away right now. I really don't think he will. Not after everything I said. That doesn't mean I want to leave this as it is right now, with him still not understanding. They were already starting to pack my stuff up.

They can do it again.

"I wish we were living in a place that made sense," I admit. "You're acting like we're living in a fantasy world, somewhere far away from here. Somewhere where good people who are kind and gentle and hard-working get the best endings, but you're wrong. Like I said, that's not how it works. That's not the kinda story this is."

"I wish it was," he responds.

"You think I don't?"

I didn't even realize he still had a grip on my shoulder, but now that I remember it's presence, I realize how tightly he's holding on. It actually hurts, and I suck in a breath that's too much too fast. It's that pressure that keeps me from spinning out of control.

I needed that all along, something to keep me tethered here. Not to Nine, but to this world. Why do you think I willingly waded into knee-high water after a creature that didn't even really exist?

Because there was no one around to tell me to stop.

"They'll keep me safe."

"You really believe that?"

"I do. And you need to believe it too."

There's two choices - let go, or refuse to. After a moment he pulls me towards him and wrenches me into a hug. Tighter than it ever has been before. It's different, the Games to the unknown. At least with the Games he knew what he'd be watching.

"No one will know you're gone."

"You will," I mumble into his shoulder. That won't help, but the truth rarely does.

"Stay here for a second," he orders, and disappears back into the house. I'm almost tempted to make a run for it, but I don't think there's any need anymore. The feeling is still there, but it's not rearing it's ugly head like it was before. I'm thankful for it.

The scythe pokes it's sharpened head back out the door a second before Beckett does, long as it is. I hardly remember leaving it on the backseat floor, half-hoping that I would never see it again and secretly hoping it wouldn't just disappear. Fenton and the car have both stuck around long enough that I'm not surprised that someone finally went poking around.

I just don't understand why.

"I was gonna ask where my little brother went," he says, and then offers it to me. "Or should I start calling you the grim reaper?"

"Please don't."

He rolls his eyes, a poor attempt to disguise his own nervousness. I hold my hands out and take it from him. Still the same weight. Cool, heavy metal nestled perfectly into the palm of my hand, like the exact moment I picked it up. There's no way I'm letting him call me that, not even as a joke, but this is him trying to make himself feel better. He kept it for a reason, and now he's giving it back. I didn't get to use it before, but I don't know if I was ready for it then.

"I think your little brother's still out there somewhere, that he got left behind," I say. "But I think he'll come back."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I do."

Beckett smiles, and lets go. "I'm holding him to that."

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

Rory's mother is very decidedly not pleased with either of us right now.

It doesn't help that I feel bad. Considering she's basically made it her duty to adopt me, I shouldn't already be making her life more difficult. That definitely wasn't my goal, but it wasn't exactly in the plans to be making such a mad dash out of Four with hardly any notice.

"They need our help, Mom," he explains, for the sixth time. Or at least he's trying. I don't actually think any of it's getting through. At least before, as morbid as it sounds, he thought he was dying for a purpose. They all did. Some good would come of his death, when the Academy kept sending them money because he sacrificed himself. There will be nothing good if one or both of us don't back. In fact, us coming back in the first place will just be like one giant tease. To us, for thinking we could integrate back in, to his family.

To mine too, I guess, but they're not the ones I care about. Neither of them tried to stop me from trying to leave. I could end up anywhere, and I don't think they'd think to come look.

Maybe if I have a guaranteed ten, twenty years ahead of me it's fixable. But who knows if I do.

"They're trained for this kind of stuff," she insists. "They should be able to handle this on their own without involving a group of teenagers."

"Some of them _are_ teenagers," I point out. Teenagers raised by people hardly any older than them, who have killed more people than any of us would care to count, but it's not like that's going to make her feel anywhere.

You can tell just how much she knows killing one person out of twenty-four messed Rory up. That could've been Dorian, if he was a few years older.

"Listen," Rory says. He drops both of his hand on her shoulders, looking more like the parent in that instant than she does. "Alessia's leaving a radio here with you. If anything happens, we'll have a way to get a hold of you. And if nothing does then we'll let you know when we're coming back. Just keep it close, and don't let Lyria mess with it. You'll have to charge it, probably every other day—"

"I know, I know. She showed me how."

"So it's fine," he reassures. "It'll be fine. It won't be longer than a few days."

A lot can happen in a few days, as we all know so well. A few hours, a few minutes, and everything can change. There's a reason we waited until Lyria and Dorian were both gone, to drop this on her. Neither of us needed near hysterical screaming added to this situation.

We have a story, and we're sticking with it. If anyone asks her, we went to Six, just for a few days. To get news on Blair, because so far no one's been nice enough to give us any. It's not exactly a lie. I _do w_ ant to know, but we're headed in the opposite direction. Someone we meet up with will know, but there's no point in knowing anything about Blair if we're all doomed to die anyway.

She is absolutely terrified. You can see it in the way she pulls him forward to hug him, afraid to let go. I hover quite awkwardly behind both of them, balancing my stuff in one hand and his in the other. Even six entire years of training really can't prepare you for this. I knew exactly what I was getting into, walking down the aisle and grabbing Malia. So did Rory, even if he wasn't particularly thrilled about it.

It doesn't come as that much of surprise this time when she lets go of him, albeit reluctantly, and holds out her arms for me. That's just her, which is likely, with the added bonus that she's now probably got it figured out that I can't remember the last time my own mother actually hugged me like she meant it.

It's unspoken, in that embrace, to take care of each other. To stick by each other's side even through the worst.

It's not something she'd need to say, but I know it'll make her feel better.

She lurks behind us the whole time down the stairs, tries and fails not to get teary-eyed when she stops right at the door's threshold and Rory kisses her on the cheek. I can feel her eyes on us down the whole road, and can't make myself look back. He does, more than once, and then waves just before we round the corner. I probably should look back, but I won't.

"We don't look suspicious at all," Rory says quietly. We look like two people about to go into a super top secret stealth mission. Which, if you think about it, maybe we are. Who really knows.

I grab his arm, slowing him to my pace. "We still have a few hours until Kelsea and the Elevens get here. Just act natural."

"Your act natural and my act natural are two extremely different things," he points out, but grabs my hand and makes himself slow down. There we go. Totally casual couple strolling down the road. Totally not doing anything weird.

It's a good thing the Peacekeepers in Four are on our side, and it's a good thing the Academy isn't all that far away. Someone would have surely stopped us by now, especially headed in such a beeline for the Academy. It's been locked up for days now, since what happened in One. No one's chancing that here, when Four is already so fragile with rebellion anyway.

The doors all may be locked, but one of the windows around the back never is. Malia broke the lock off nearly three years ago now in an attempt to train at night, to get ahead of the others.

That's probably why they picked her and not me.

There's no one in the back alley, but we both still stand there for a few minutes, waiting. It feels like any second now someone is bound to walk around the corner and stand there until we fuck off. That would be one way to ward the two of us off. Rory would probably hightail it in the opposite direction and leave me standing here, if it meant not getting caught.

But no one does. I reach back for the window and hold my breath as it sticks for a second before the latch pops free, just as expected.

"I don't even wanna know why you know this is here," Rory says, but he still boosts me up and onto the windowsill so I can swing my legs through and onto the other side. The storage room is dark, the door shut, but at least it's familiar. He clambers through after me and then slides the window back down. Easy enough to get back out through.

There are cameras in this place, but what do I care? What are they going to do to me for it?

"Feels like the creepy basement all over again," Rory murmurs, letting me step out first into the hallway. Not quite, but I get where he's coming from. It's not nearly as dark, with all the windows, but the echo of our footsteps is new. Usually there's so many people in here that you can hardly hear yourself think. To be honest, it's kind of a nice change.

"No bodies."

"Nope."

His voice doesn't waver. That's an even nicer change.

I really do get the basement comparison, but the basement armory has absolutely nothing on the Academy's. This one sprawls the length of an entire field, filled with every weapon you could possibly imagine. The basement inspired feelings of terror, of paranoia. A body on the floor and blood under foot. But this is a second home for him, and a first one for me.

"They're bringing the guns, right?" he asks.

"Let's hope." I know there's guns here, too, but there's no way we're getting access to those. I don't even think anyone outside of the instructors knows where they keep them. I guess it's a good thing that they've spent the past few years teaching us to shoot, after so many guns started cropping up in the Games. Here I thought that trend was starting to die out again.

It's a good thing it didn't. Not fully.

Rory starts loading arrows into a quiver as I head further into the room, searching in the darkness for something else. Maybe we shouldn't just be considering weapons. Weird coming from me, I know, but we need other things too. Medical supplies, for one. Their two medics won't be enough to save everyone, if it comes to that.

It would be nice, but that definitely isn't the truth, no matter how much he want to be.

I'm halfway through the room when all the lights flicker on. It would make sense that Rory turned them on, because seeing would be nice, but I can still see him from the corner of my eye. He's nowhere near the door, and unless the lights suddenly became motion activated in the past month, then it wasn't either of us.

"So," Ronan says from the doorway, finger still hovering over the light switch. "What are you guys up to?"

Rory drops the arrows all over the floor.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

I know Blair's getting antsy.

That's his right. If there were a bunch of murder-hungry Sentinels invading my District I'm sure I would be too. We've still got quite a drive before we're there. Seren and Luca and Audrel are all waiting for us.

But I can't leave yet. There's still one more thing that I have to see through.

Blair didn't have to come with me all the way to the square. I was fully prepared to leave him at the car and have them all wait there until I got back. No one else wants to see this. As much as Jericho wanted to support all of this even he couldn't talk himself into it.

No one wants to see it through. They just have to.

"How long is this going to take?" Blair asks, for the third time. "And where are we going?"

"The square."

"Okay, but why?"

I'm sure he's going to figure it out pretty damn quick. There's quite the crowd of people. More than I was expecting, but then again, we've never really had a precedent for something like this. There's nothing to compare it to. I almost wish there was, because then I would know what to expect.

I start edging through the people at the fringe, gently. No reason to cause any more panic, any more chaos. Even Blair seems to get it, pushing very carefully after me. Some of these people don't want to be here either. You can see it in their eyes. Even the ones lining the inner edge don't look particularly thrilled, but there's no reason for a punishment if no one's here to witness it.

The next thing I see is the noose.

Something in my heart stutters at the sight of the gallows. They weren't anything special, or grand. Just a small, wooden stage and two stairs, looking ready to fall apart at the next second.

That man's not far from the stairs, either. Wrists and ankles chained, face bruised, a cut running the entire length of his cheek. Wherever they had taken him after he had shot Cade, it hadn't been anywhere official. Someone had probably laid into him with relish, before the Peacekeepers found out.

"Jesus christ," Blair mutters, bumping up against my back. "Hanging, of all things?"

"Hanging is kinda Twelve's thing," I respond. In past years they'd started making the transition to the firing squad, before anything else, but guns, right now? Probably not a good thing.

They'd be shooting more than just this man if they brought guns out.

"Who decides on this shit?" he asks.

"Whoever speaks up first. You really think the Capitol ever wanted to spend time on a judicial system here of all places?"

If Blair grew up here, instead of Two, his father would've died a long time ago. Firing squad or not, he wouldn't be in prison. No one here wastes any time on that. That's why Twelve is as bad as it is. Half the time you can get away with your crimes and run rampant on the street, and the other half you don't get a say in the matter. In chains, marched up the stairs. Killed.

And that's it.

There's never any grand fanfare, either. I've never seen one, before today, but it's never anything special. One of the Peacekeepers grabs the place where his hands have been joined together behind his back and pushes him up the stairs. Someone else produces the little wooden block and holds it there while he steps onto it. The noose is nearly too high up in the air for the Peacekeeper to reach.

The fear is written all over his face when the rope is pulled down over his head. He chokes a little when it tightens around his neck, the tips of his toes scrabbling for the edge of the block.

There's no getting out of this, so I don't know why he's thinking to prolong it.

"You really wanna watch this?" Blair asks quietly. I hardly hear him, but when the words finally do break through, I don't even know what to say. Do I? Watching him struggle for his own life right now is enough. I can see Cade's girlfriend across the crowd, eyes red, watching in stony-faced silence. There's no sign of Ashara. She's probably too busy trying to figure out how to get to Two, once we leave.

Blair's still looking down at me. I don't really get the chance to look back before someone pulls the block out from underneath him.

I'm surprised the support doesn't crack in two. All I can focus on is how taut the rope goes, instantly, and he's left wriggling in the air, choking worse than before, hands still bound behind his back. His legs, even still forced together at the ankle, are kicking frantically, slicing through the air with a surprising amount of speed.

Not a single person in the square moves, or says a thing.

I suck in a breath, and close my eyes.

The second I do it I feel like I coward. I may not be able to see it anymore but I can still hear him, clear as day. Struggling for whatever few breaths he has left.

It's awful. I killed two people and even then it didn't feel like so much as a punch to the gut as this does.

I'm sick and tired of people dying, of having people who _deserve_ this.

That's why we need to go to Two. I should have just got in the car and left.

Blair's hand comes up and settles in the middle of my back, smoothing up and down over my spine. I focus on that, instead of the noises that are very quickly starting to quiet and die off. I open my eyes but keep them fixed on the dirt beneath my feet this time. It's the only safe place to look.

I know Blair's still looking, without lifting my eyes. I wish I could understand it.

A few people around us start moving. I think that it's over. Judging by the quiet murmur that's starting back up, it must be.

"Why are you still looking?" I ask, and finally chance a glance up. His face is impassive, which I'm almost kind of grateful for. Everyone else around us seems to be reacting. Cade's girlfriend still looks just as miserable as she did before. Someone not far behind us is clearly crying. I'm not sure why.

"So you didn't have to," he says. "You ready to go?"

He somehow manages to make that sound very simple. It's not. Neither of us are simple, much as we may try, and we're definitely not simple together. I think all of _this,_ whatever this even is, is a lot more complicated than either of us would have ever anticipated.

I nod. His hand is still on my back.

It's not nearly as awful as it could have been.

* * *

 **Lucien Klasse, 28 years, Formerly of District Two.**

* * *

Being back in Two after all these years isn't quite as weird as he would have expected it to be.

Something in his blood knows this place, and it knows him back. He was supposed to come back here, for one reason or another. Ripped out of his home when he was thirteen, led into the darkness of the trees and the mountains, never to return. Not until now.

The others don't feel the same. None of them belonged to Two the way he did. None of them know it's streets and it's people, save for the ones they saw whenever they could come out of the forest, far to the east.

He doesn't know where any of them are, now. A few of them stayed back at the village to clean it out, but the rest came back here. He's sure that Elesa would have stayed, and Zayd with her, but besides that there was no reason to put themselves out there any longer.

This is the biggest government facility in the country outside of the Capitol. A towering, behemoth of a building, sprawling across several city blocks. He could lose any one of them in here for days and never see them again, if they chose to run off. It was empty when they had arrived, blissfully empty. Jenzen had brought the jet in and the few remaining people on the surrounding streets had scattered like mice.

All of Two's people seem very bold, very stubborn, until you put something bigger than them in their eyesight. Then they do as all people do, and run for the hills.

He doesn't think anyone will chance trying to start something against him. That was why they eliminated the victors when they did. Get rid of the one group of people here who still pose a threat.

They've already had numerous offers, from groups of Peacekeepers. As soon as they set the village on fire they came pouring in, to offer their aid, their weapons. Anything they could, if it meant that they wouldn't be the next ones on the kill list.

Saving themselves, and their families. That'll be smart, or not, depending on the outcome of all of this.

Lucien's sure that someone out there is going to try something eventually. Sooner, rather than later. Prometheus is still out there somewhere, all of them, clinging to life like a bunch of cockroaches. They've got friends now, the Capitol on their side.

He was scared to die years ago, when they dragged him in. A flicker of terror, when the whole base went up in flames and they transported their group to the Capitol.

It's all long gone now.

He's no longer scared to die.

Whoever comes will bring something down on them that they haven't seen before. The world is going to hit their shoulders like the pace of one of Jenzen's jets, and they'll be powerless to stop it.

But if the world's ending, if _they're_ ending, he wasn't going to do it hiding away in the President's mansion, waiting for their new leader to surrender. Waiting, in reality, for their new President to get them all killed.

It was an easy decision. Hardly a decision at all, if you asked Carnelia. All of the Capitolites dropped easy enough. Most of them didn't even have time to scream. Vaccaro did, often, whenever they asked him a question. Whenever he started bleeding again.

There was no medic to save him even if they had wanted to, but Lucien isn't sure he was privy to that type of information.

To anyone else, this quiet would be nerve-wracking. The dust settling before the storm comes back over the mountains.

And it will. It all just depends on when.

He takes a step out onto the balcony. The stairs leading to the main entrance below him are fifty stairs long, sprawling out across the stone and concrete. At each end the flags of Panem are limp, dead, the lack of wind refusing to carry them.

The smoke hasn't started to thin from the village yet. He isn't sure it's that that's keeping the people tucked safely away in their homes, or their presence alone. They've had that effect lately. Quinn, when he realized they were his protection now that Dominika was dead. Vaccaro, when Elesa and Tallis has stepped into that room to play with him like a toy.

Every single one of the victors, most of whom hadn't even put up a fight. Old and weak, some sleeping in their beds, bones fragile underhand.

There's not a single person in sight, not for miles. He lets himself take it all in, a District crumbled to dust beneath their feet.

There's no one around except for them.

Just the way he likes it.

* * *

Basically the working chapter title was something like: The Kids Are Not Alright (and they will in fact Go Off) but that's way too long of a title and no one truly cares anyway, so. Might as well keep the aesthetic going.

Until next time.


	48. Nine Lives

Outskirts of District One.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

Driving back to One for Dimara produces far more anxiety than leaving it ever did.

I thought it would be nice to be alone again, to get some time to myself. Turns out I was stupid for ever even thinking that in the first place. After you spend so much time with a certain group of people, pretty much unable to escape them, you get used to it. Staying up above ground and walking away for a few minutes seemed like a great idea, theoretically, until Fenton cut off my communication with them and had me convinced I was about to die.

Maybe that was what changed it. Right then all I could tell myself was that I shouldn't have ever stayed up there alone. We all knew there was danger out there somewhere, but we had started to loosen up. Allow ourselves to forget about it.

That's kinda what happened back home, too. I was settling back in, talking with Evie, placing myself back into society. All on my own.

And that's when I started missing them.

I still don't really know them, not like I've known some people, but it feels like I do. Bonding over shared near death experiences, I guess. Maybe that just makes the bond stronger.

It's just as difficult to see the fence in the early morning hours as it was during midnight, but it took us a full day to get here, and we weren't about to wait for something so trivial like the sun rising. At this point we have no time to waste, if we're going to group back up and meet at the edge of Two before the day ends.

We're all heading back to the same place. The thought makes me genuinely, shockingly happy, before I remember just why we're doing it.

What's breaking into the biggest government facility I've ever seen to fight a group of Sentinels? No big deal, _obviously._

Maybe Dimara will have some advice about how to wrap my brain around that.

I see her a lot sooner than I expected to, sticking out like a beacon when the rest of the area is so stunningly empty, just outside the fence. There's another girl with her. Her girlfriend, then. Kali, I think? There's no way it's anyone else, not at this hour. Not when she probably knows exactly who's coming for her - not just any normal person would be here to greet a kid from Seven they have no business knowing and two more former Sentinels.

There is absolutely zero reason to have any sort of anxiety about all of this. It's _Dimara._

If I'm being real here, I'd probably still be losing it a bit even if was Nadir. Obviously the person I feel closest to, the one who I actually went through some of the Games with. But a reunion is a reunion, no matter who it is. It's made worse by the fact that I tried to make such a little deal about leaving them in the first place. Act like you don't care and maybe you won't, type of thing. You'd think I had learned from Isi that that wasn't the truth at all, no matter how much you willed it to be. Shirin was the only one who ever managed to pull that off.

The car starts slowing to a halt, and I already have a grip on the door handle.

I force myself to stay seated for as long as physically possible, ignoring just how much I want to leap out. The car's not moving very fast. I could probably pull off a very graceless tuck and roll from this vantage point.

It wouldn't be the most surprising, nor the most embarrassing thing I'd done in front of someone. One of them included.

I need to not look so eager for this, to nearly die all over again. That's what we're getting into, isn't it? Didn't sign up for it the first time, definitely didn't plan on signing up for it a second time.

At least with them I actually think I have a chance. It doesn't just seem like me against the world anymore. Sure, I still feel like I have something to prove. I'll probably always feel like that. But for the first time, besides Nadir, I don't feel like it's _necessary_ for me to do it all alone. We know how to survive as a group, apparently. Even when we shouldn't have.

The car stops. I throw the door open.

Dimara doesn't look great. A little irritated, a lot exhausted. Basically what I expected her to look like, except I'll still need some time to marvel at how she hasn't just completely fallen apart. All of the shit we went through, to get home to this? Since when did Seven become one of the most stable, wide-open places to exist? Did we just absorb it from them?

"I'm gonna hug you," she informs me.

"Good," I fire back, and reach forward to hug her before she even moves. It's a good thing I've spent the past three hours hyping myself up for this moment; it's only because of that, that Dimara manages to look more shocked than I would. It's a little bit satisfying, but more relieving than anything else. After a moment she wriggles one of her arms free of my hold and fumbles for my forehead, nearly hitting me in the eye.

"What the hell," she mutters. "Are you sick?"

I swat her hand away, even though that requires letting go of her with one arm. Even being made fun of really isn't that bad, in retrospect.

"I'm serious," she says. "Are you alright? What's wrong with you?"

"I'm fine," I insist. "Are _you_ alright?"

She nods, a little too quickly to really be considered normal. Kali's still lurking just behind her, and frowns. But there's nothing either of us can really do about it right now. All that we can do is make sure this ends. Fixing ourselves and the messes we leave back home can come after.

"I'm good," she says. "Ready to get the fuck out of here."

"Hey," Kali insists quietly, and that's all it takes for Dimara to turn back to her and grab her, practically squeezing the life out of her. It's clear very quickly; that hug is one of her last points of solitude, something I'm never going to be able to give her. It's only ever going to come from one person. It's a place of safety in the middle of the literal hellfire that this District has become.

I find myself stepping back to the car, averting my eyes. It doesn't really feel like something I have the privilege to be watching. This is for them, and them alone.

I'm fully prepared to get back in the car too, until there's a light tap against my arm.

"Can I hug you too?" Kali asks, and I blink in surprise. Refusing would make me the biggest asshole in history, save for the Sentinels that are currently destroying Two, so I'll settle for the awkwardness I get when I nod in acceptance. And even though it should be, it's really not. Kali doesn't push it. For someone who would supposedly have been volunteering next year, if Dimara had come back, she seems soft. Gentle. A lot like Rory, actually.

I guess we all have parts of us that other people wouldn't expect.

She squeezes me for one last second, and doesn't let it linger. She lets me hop back into the car almost instantly and then reaches back for Dimara to kiss her again, while I make room.

I can tell just how hard it is for Dimara to get in the car beside me. She didn't really hesitate on the phone but this is still hard for her. Probably harder for her than most of us, really. A Career so ready to leave her home in the first place is now reluctant to go at all. Most people don't get that lucky twice, don't get the opportunity to come back.

We all must have nine lives. That's the only way we're all still breathing.

"You ready?" I ask. It's not exactly up to me. Kane's already started the car back up, and Kali's headed back to the fence, glancing back over her shoulder every few seconds.

Dimara looks away from the window, and back to me. "Let's do this.

Whatever _this_ even is. I don't think any of us are quite sure.

I guess we'll find out soon enough.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

Going to Twelve pays off in the long run, for a reason I wouldn't have expected.

We're the first ones back to Two. The outskirts, anyway. The sky is just starting to lighten again. It was hard enough, to try and get any sleep when I didn't know what we were headed back to, but it's not like I have a choice. The entire time I'm in and out of it. The whole time I can hear Audrel fiddling with a number of radios, trying to establish contact. Once in a while a voice will almost filter through, a few words or a sentence or two, before it dies out again.

Those voices are starting to get stronger, though. The car stops mere feet away from the fence, right where the train leaves Two and continues out into the wilderness.

We could walk right along the tracks in, but it doesn't look good.

Seren and I both look onto the smoke far off in the distance before everyone else does. We knew that shit was going down, but not what, exactly. It's all the way on the opposite side of the District. Almost faded, and with the overcast sky some people would probably miss it, if they were passing by too quickly to really pay attention.

But we both see it.

"Is that coming from the victor's village?" I ask, and Seren opens the car door. Luca reaches across and grabs her before she even gets a leg out, pulling her back in, and then reaches over her to shut the door.

"If that _is_ coming from the village—"

"Then you're staying in the car," he finishes for her. "Audrel, who can you get a hold of to find out what's going on?"

"Whoever you want me to, at this distance. As long as you can tell me where they are. We don't know where Seren's brothers are, or her parents. Figuring out who to talk to is half the problem."

There's no doubt that there's thousands of people displaced right now, trying to get away from the smoke. That, or trying to get as far away as humanly possible from whoever's shown up here. If something's happened to the victors, then they're out. Nadir's trying to give me a look, trying to coerce me into something I most definitely do not want to do.

It's do it, or Seren's probably going to tell us all to fuck ourselves, head down the tracks, and leave us all here to find out what happened herself.

"Could you get a hold of the Academy?" I ask. "Some of the phone lines in the offices are probably still up. Even if no one's watching them someone will answer it, if they hear it."

"Sure. Who are you looking for?"

"Just— just give me the radio, once you get through."

"Your brother?" Seren asks quietly. I didn't even want to say it out-loud. I could've just gotten on the radio and pretended that I was looking to contact anyone else. Fact of the matter is, Mauro's probably one of the few people who hasn't scattered. A small select group there would have no where else to go. They're closer to the village than most other things - the ones who have access to other places are long gone by now.

Audrel's still tinkering with things, turning dials and pressing buttons and asking every few minutes if anyone can hear her, but there's nothing but silence. It's growing more alarming by the minute.

How many bad things have happened, in the hours it took us to get here? While I was in the backseat of a car sleeping?

Noises finally start to come through from the other end, and after a moment there's another voice on the end, tinny and crackling. Audrel adjusts something and the voice comes through clearer.

"Hello?"

She thrusts the radio at me. Everyone in the car is staring at me, waiting.

"Who is this?"

There's a very long, awkward pause, and the voice on the other end is very small, very nervous. "Who is _this_?"

"Doesn't matter who I am. Is Mauro still around?"

"Why?"

Jesus, do the younger kids living at the Academy have zero concept of just listening and not asking questions? It doesn't really seem like it, these days. They're silent again, clearly waiting for an answer.

"Just go around shouting his name," I tell them. "He'll come out, believe me."

"Alright, but who is this?"

"Just tell him that his brother wants to talk to him." My patience is already starting to wear thin with whoever this happens to be. Do as your told, ask questions later. That was _literally_ beat into me and then reinforced, later in life. You'd think this one had never heard those words spoken out-loud before. They're certainly never going to listen to them.

"Oh my god, is this—"

" _Go get him_ ," I insist, and finally hear what I'm pretty sure is them dropping the phone before they go skittering off. Hopefully he really is still around. This kid certainly isn't going to do wonders on their own.

It doesn't take very long. I still stare out the window all the time, and everyone else does much of the same. There's nothing we can do on our own. Going into the District just the five of us probably isn't smart, but will it be any smarter, once the others show up? We'll just be a bigger target then. That, or people will finally start crawling their way out.

I hear the phone picked back up long before the voice comes through the other end.

I almost don't expect a reply at all. It would be more like my brother to just hang up on me, instead of answering. It's probably what I deserve, after so many years of putting him through endless bullshit. If only he hadn't put me through the exact same thing.

But I hear the exhale, and then a very incredulous, " _Blair_?"

"Oh, damn, you're still alive?" I ask.

"Really?"

"That was a joke."

"I could say the same fucking thing about you," he insists. "Where the hell have you been for the past few weeks?"

"Doesn't matter right now, I need you to—"

" _Blair_."

"It seriously doesn't matter. Why the hell is the victor's village on fire?"

There's the longest pause yet. "Where are you?"

"Nowhere."

"Blair, if you've been here the entire fucking time—"

"Chill," I tell him. "I just got here ten minutes ago."

"Just tell me where you are, I'll come and meet you."

"Mauro, no, listen to me. I'm serious. I know I really don't have any right to get you to listen to me at this point, but you need to. You need to find what's going on. Leave someone with the phone and go to the village. Go and find Julian, he'll at least go with you. And then find anyone else who's willing. If anyone there is still alive you need to go find out."

"No one in here's gone outside in two days, _including_ me. You really think anyone wants to go find out?"

"Julian will," I repeat. "There's at least a few people besides him."

"Do you know what's happening?" he asks. There's no way he'll ever admit to feeling fear, but a healthy dose of it would probably do him some good. I don't know what's happening though, not really. Right now the majority of that is on Luca. Once we're all together, once we can sit down and figure this out, I'm sure they'll tell us. But there's no point in freaking us all out before then.

It is Luca, finally, that pulls the radio out of my hand. "Bring weapons. A lot of them. We're on the east side, where the tracks go past the fence. Once you go there, bring everyone this way."

"You're sabotaging me," I inform him, but that's really not what I'm thinking about. What I can choose to focus on is the unspoken part of that sentence. There may not be anyone left alive to bring. That's what Seren's been thinking since the beginning, what Nadir's thinking right now when she looks at me. For the lack of information that I have, this was not how this was supposed to go. They can't have touched the victors, can't have killed them all.

They killed the Vice President, though. Killed everyone working for him.

They very well might have.

"Who is this?" Mauro asks. It feels like too many people have been asking that today, myself included. Clearly Luca's voice has startled him right out of chastising and then promptly ignoring me. That's probably a good thing.

The answer won't calm Mauro down any, though. I gesture for the radio and Luca hands it back to me.

"Mauro," I start. "Just, just go. Please. I'll stay here."

I'll have to erase the fact that I'm grovelling to my brother from my mind, later, but for now I can handle it. He just needs to listen to me, for once, and if staying here makes him do that then I'll just have to. He'll have to trust that I'm not just telling him to do something because I hate him any more than he hates me.

If he really hated me, he wouldn't be listening at all right now.

"I'm going right now," he answers. " _Stay there_."

I hear the line go dead, and from that point on all I can do is just hope that he manages to succeed in something, whatever it is. Just one good thing, in the midst of all of this, would be nice.

"How funny would it be if I ran away right now?" I mutter, and Nadir rolls her eyes, trying to lean around me to get a better view out the window. If Luca can react that quick when Seren tries to take off, I'd love to see who moves first when I attempt to dive headfirst out of the backseat. I do think it would be funny to find out, if we weren't in the middle of all of this.

I'll save the real running for when Mauro actually does show up.

If he does at all.

All we can do now is wait and see.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

I'm lucky that we're not the first ones there.

I don't know how much longer I could spend waiting, if we had to sit here until everyone else showed up. There's another car far off in the distance, too. They'll be in maybe a few minutes after we stop.

So that's probably almost everyone, then. Not much longer.

I have to stop Kelsea from leaning halfway out the window to see who's in what car. I think in order to forget everything else she's just choosing to focus solely on the fact that we're somehow bringing everyone back together. It feels like it's been a very long time, not just a few weeks. Kelsea had looked so genuinely excited at the sight of us, like it had been years since she had seen our faces.

Like I said, it does indeed feel like it.

I have no idea who's in the car just in front of us, and I have a feeling Kelsea's going to find out before I do. She climbed out of the middle seat to get better access to the door nearly an hour ago, clearly eager to get there. One thought short of straight up asking Linnet if we were there yet. Her happiness is at least, for the time being, helping me forget about everything else. We can confront the real hard truths after this.

It doesn't make it much easier to ignore the smoke, but that's a question I don't have an answer to, and judging by Celia's face she doesn't have one either.

Kelsea hits the ground before the car even fully stops behind the other one. It's a good thing her ankle is fully healed, or we'd have quite the situation on our hands. She's nearly to the other car before I've even started sliding across the seat.

"Who is it?" I ask.

"You say that like I can see anymore than you can," Celia says. "Move it."

I get out at the same time Kelsea yanks the back door of the other car open. "Nadir! Wait— _Blair_?"

"Excuse _me?_ " Celia asks incredulously, and then ducks under my arm, jogging directly to the car. There's no way Kelsea is serious, is she? There's no way. No one told us he'd be here, and I would have never assumed. Last we saw him he was on the fast track to being half-dead.

He's very decidedly not like that anymore.

"What the hell?" Celia questions, although I don't know if she's really asking anyone or just getting the words out. Nadir's sitting in the backseat, and it is very much not half-dead Blair who's leaning so far into the front half of the car I'm convinced he's about to fall into it. They're trying to listen to something on a radio, but it's nothing clear.

Celia looks between the two of them for a very long moment, before she raises both eyebrows. "Why are you two _together?"_

"Ignore that question, why do you suddenly have another arm again?" I manage, my voice coming out much more choked than I wanted it to. Both Celia and Kelsea's heads swivel around so fast that I'm surprised neither of them get whiplash. Seren hops out of the passenger seat before anyone can get a word in edgewise, which leaves enough room for Celia to climb in just where she had been, and then she reaches forward _and punches Blair in the arm._

"Celia!" I splutter, and she recoils instantly, swearing.

"Ow, _jesus_ , do you have rocks in your sleeve, or what?"

Blair still hasn't said a word, but now he switches the radio off with a very exasperated sigh, turns back to Celia, and gives her the finger.

A finger that is made entirely of metal. Celia's eyes widen to the point where it would almost be comical, if I knew mine didn't look the exact same. Kelsea, too, but then she starts clapping, purely out of excitement. Broken ankles and missing arms are apparently things that can just be instantaneously fixed, now. Who knew?

"That," Celia says very slowly. "Is the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen."

"God, you sound like my brother," Nadir says. "Don't inflate his ego anymore."

"So he _was_ in Twelve with you," Celia says, or at least she's trying to. Blair's got her in something that's half hug, half headlock, and I can't tell who's winning this particular battle. Anything to take the focus off, well, us. It's something she's been trying, over and over again, with quite a few different people, but so far it hasn't worked. Maybe now she's finally found a loophole.

The other car has started to roll up, now, and Kelsea's head whips around again. How she's still managing that, I'm not sure.

"Vance!" she shouts, and promptly goes tearing through the grass towards the other car. At the rate she's going, someone's going to accidentally hit her. "Oh, you can walk again!"

I'm not particularly sure how she knows that, considering he's not even fully out of the car yet, but she seems pretty convinced. She all but pulls him the rest of the way out of the car and nearly sends him right to the ground, she launches herself at him so fast. There's not much room for Rooke to get out behind the two of them, so he just sits there for a moment, looking on with a slight smile on his face.

Luca is also looking at all of us with a vast amount of amusement. Audrel's already got out of the car and followed Seren around to the front of it. Probably to get away from all of our racket.

"Just get this over with," Nadir says. She reaches across to roll down the opposite window, grabs the back of Blair's jacket, and basically forces him out of it. Or at least the top half - head, shoulders, and arms, which is clearly all she wants. It has pretty much the same effect as it did the first time. Vance had been hugging Kelsea, about to let Rooke in as well, but both of them go still very quickly. I almost kind of wish that someone had a camera. Faces like these are meant to be captured, for later amusement.

"Yeah!" Blair yells. "Believe me, I was surprised too!"

Rooke folds both of his hands over his face, which is about how I felt about it. Vance nearly thinks better of laughing and then starts up after a second, and it's not long before Kelsea is as well.

We should not be anywhere near this happy right now, but that's seven of nine, and Dimara and Tanis can't be far behind. I already didn't think Blair would be anywhere near here, so that's more than I thought I was getting.

There's still that smoke, though. Seren hasn't taken her eyes off of it this entire time, and it looks like Luca is growing increasingly worried as well.

That's one bad thing, and this is one good thing.

At least they're starting to even themselves out.

Who knows how long that'll be the case, though.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

"Something's wrong," Tanis says, very quietly.

Wrong in the exact same way that things went south in One, even. It's the exact same, seeing that smoke in the distance, feeling the apprehension and terror rise.

Not even the cars I can already see parked at the edge of the fence are doing any wonders for trying to pull my focus away. I already figured we'd be the last ones to arrive, so it's no real surprise. The others are all here, probably wondering what's going on, same as me and Tanis. I don't think they'll have any answers, either, and reassurances can only do so much in a time like this.

"There are people on the tracks," Meritt says.

"Coming this way?" Kane asks.

"Looks like it."

I hadn't been looking that way, but the second I do I can see them as well. A decent sized group of them, maybe ten or so. We outnumber them easily. If they were posing a threat I'm sure someone near the other cars would have made a move by now, and the unknown people walking this way would be dead pretty quickly.

"Stay in here for a second," Kane says, and I'm sure we would have all listened, if not for the people already approaching the car. Well, at least _we_ would have. I don't think anyone's quite sure about what the hell Meritt does and does not listen to, at this point. I think he just gets a free pass no matter what. Tanis' door gets pulled open a second before mine does, and she's only got her seatbelt halfway off before Nadir bodily pulls her out of the car and into her arms.

Celia is very frantically pulling at the door handle, and Kane lets her do it for a moment before he unlocks it. Celia does much the same to me, once she's got a hand on me. It's not nearly as suffocating; she waits until my feet are firmly on the ground and then lets me hug her, instead of choosing to crush me before I get my bearings.

"Let me tell you, I am going to have the best fucking nap in the world once this is all over," I say, and she snorts.

"Dude, same."

"I think we all are," Rory says. "But you really deserve one."

And here I thought I was just being dramatic, wanting to get away from all of this, but Rory doesn't think so. Then again, I'm pretty sure if he could have had us avoid all of this in the first place, then he would have.

"What got burned down here?" I ask into his shoulder. He turns to look back, a little bit at Celia but also way past the fence. I didn't think I'd have to be asking that question, so shortly after it happened in my own home. This isn't supposed to be a reoccurring thing that keeps happening in our lives - and I thought Nadir had it bad in Twelve. At least she's not dealing with fire.

"Okay, and who are those people coming towards us?" I continue. That seems to be the more pressing matter.

"Blair's brother. They sent him to the victor's village, to see what was going on."

I had been about to continue on my spiel, unable to help wondering who was already walking down the tracks to meet them, but I realize the second I'm about to ask.

"Yeah," Rory says slowly. "That's exactly who you think it is."

"Why is he here?" I ask. There is absolutely no way that Blair should be fit to be here right now. Last time I saw him he wasn't even walking on his own, and now he seems to be doing it just fine. That's a pretty large jump to make.

"He's fine," Celia insists. "Believe me. He got in contact with you before he went to Twelve, right? How much did he tell you?"

"Nothing?" I respond. "He didn't even tell me that's where he was going. And then he gave the phone back to Seren when I told him he was stupid."

I can hear Tanis laugh from here.

"Just go after him," Celia says. "You'll see. He's fine. Totally fine."

Why am I more suspicious now than I was before I got out of the car? It should be going backwards, not this way. The answers should be flowing faster now that I've got other people to turn to. Rory nudges me after them, though. Blair's by far the closest, but Seren's not far behind him, and Luca's following along with her. Nadir has dragged Tanis up to the edge of the tracks with the others, and I make my way over to them first.

Kelsea reaches out for a hug, and then Vance, but no one else gets a chance before I grab Rooke's arm and start dragging him after me.

"I need someone over there who looks non-intimidating," I explain, before he can bother asking. "Everyone over there looks like they want to punch something."

"Why don't you bring Kelsea then?" he insists wildly, and just manages to thrust the scythe back at Vance before he comes stumbling after me. "No one would even think about hitting her."

Probably not, but for some reason I feel like we're gonna need to throw Rooke straight into this over Kelsea. She'll probably go running right after Vance, or whoever first yells her name, before he will. Product of actually having that the whole time in the arena, instead of being alone for several days without an end in sight. At least that's what he thought.

It's definitely Blair's brother. That much is clear, the closer we get. Blair looks like he'd rather die than hug him, but he doesn't really get a choice in the matter. I don't think I would give him one either. He goes very awkwardly still for a moment the second his brother's arms land around him, but I think it's more shock than anything else. He hugged all of us just fine.

"None of the victors are with them," Rooke says quietly. "Is that a bad thing?"

"Sure is," I murmur. The entire group looks a little sick, like they just saw something they wished they hadn't.

It doesn't take me very long to notice that Blair eventually grabs his brother back with _both_ arms, and I spend a much longer time staring. Rooke's looking at me, clearly waiting for a reaction. Am I supposed to be asking questions? Am I supposed to understand what I'm looking at?

You can see it written all over his brother's face the second Blair lets go of him, that something went more than just bad. Seren still shoulders her way in, though. even though the answer is already clear. None of us need to ask, but she's still going to, and I get that. I understand. Seeing Royal's name staring back at me as deceased still doesn't make sense.

"They're all dead," his brother says. "They left their families alive and set the unoccupied houses on fire to ward people off, I think."

Seren's already started walking off. Not in any particular direction, just _away_. Slam the walls down, shove the emotions back in until it's safe to do later. Luca just misses grabbing her arm and has to go after her to stop her from getting any further. I get it. When I saw the fire I wished that I could run away too. That seemed like the better option, rather than confronting it.

Blair's studying his shoes with way too much focus, and I thought I was joking about everyone over here looking like they wanted to hit something, but he kinda does, right then. That, or scream at the top of his lungs. Both things would help.

I feel the hesitation in my own hand, before I reach out and grab his arm, where there hadn't been anything previously. Nothing happens. My hand comes into contact with something that is completely unlike his flesh and blood arm, but it's still there nonetheless. After a moment he looks up at me, and takes a very deep breath that almost looks like it hurts.

"Hey," I say quietly, and his face twists a little. It's pretty terrible, that that's ten times better than the last time I saw him.

"We're gonna figure this out," I tell him, and it takes everything in him to nod, I can tell. His brother grabs his other arm, the actual one, and that's probably a good thing. I don't think he's realized, just how badly things went in the woods for him. It's probably a good thing he hasn't.

"There - there was someone still there besides the family, when we got there," he says. "He tried to attack us, when we saw him, so we figured he had to be with them. We took him out, though, there were too many of us for him. But we didn't kill him."

Luca's head has already snapped up. He's got Seren by both shoulders, which seems to have halted any further progress she was trying to make, but even she looks up too, when he says that.

"We left people behind to watch him," he continues. "We didn't know what to ask, but we figured someone could talk to him."

Luca nods. That's a start, at least. One person out of an entire group doesn't seem like a lot, but it's more than what we had a few minutes ago. At least something came out of this whole burning mess.

"Yeah, I'm gonna talk to him alright," Meritt mutters. He's so close to Kane's back I'd be surprised if they weren't glued together, although I think he's doing it more for the sake of the so far innocent trainee's of Two rather than his own. No need to shock anyone into a heart attack as the sun goes down. I don't think anyone would appreciate seeing him right now. It still doesn't stop me from hearing him.

"Oh, no," Rooke says, apparently having just realized what he meant.

"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear you say that," Kane says flatly.

Maybe it doesn't sound great, but if one group of people just executed all of Two's remaining victors and effectively blacked out most of the District, then I don't think they're gonna talk for the sake of it. It's gonna take more than that.

At this point, if it gets us closer to the end of this, I'm all for it.

* * *

...

Yeah, I still don't know what to say here. Just pretend this says something vaguely interesting or informative, for me.

Until next time.


	49. To Whoever's Listening

District Two; western quadrant.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

I wish someone had the ability to make this sound easy.

We've been awake all night. It took several hours to get a group together and send them back to the village, and longer than that for them to come back with someone new in tow. At least what Blair's brother said was true; it looks like they did effectively take him out. He looks about the same age as the rest of them, which isn't that old at all.

He was hardly an adult when the bombings happened five years ago.

It takes a shorter amount of time, thankfully, to track down Seren's brothers, once we've got help to do it. It looks like they've been collecting supplies for days. Guns, mostly, and a lot of ammunition. It's crazy to think that they're going to be handing those to us, not long from now. Guns in training are basically a staple, now, but learning how to shoot one and actually pulling the trigger on someone is very different.

But it can't be any different, when we go through with this.

It's nearing morning by the time we finally settle down, as far away from the government building in the center of the District as we can without leaving entirely. There's still no time to sleep, and no one's really willing to anyway. There's too much to figure out, too many angles to look at this from. In a few hours, max, all of the victors who chose to come will be here. So that's nine of us, twelve of the Sentinel group - we already outnumber our enemies, but we're gonna need to do a lot more than outnumber them.

It's very hard to not fall asleep once we all sit down, mostly enclosed around a table. There's half-assed maps and layouts of the whole building, as much as we could gather in the short amount of time we had.

"How many Peacekeepers do you think went to them?" Luca asks eventually.

"A few hundred," Audrel answers. "Corvis was keeping tabs on the numbers that stayed. Out of those few hundred a lot of them will probably come running back once they realized someone else is going on the offense, but not until then."

A few hundred more people to fight makes this sound a lot more daunting.

Judging by the faces of everyone else, they're thinking the same thing. Meritt and Seren are the only ones who are missing, and I'm choosing to ignore the very broken, pained screams occasionally coming from the other room. Or at least I'm trying. Sentinels were trained to be soldiers and assassins, what the hell could they possibly be doing to that guy to finally make him crack?

Hopefully nothing I'll ever see.

"We'll have to keep most of the victors outside," Alessia says. "Especially the ones that are older. The Peacekeepers will be out there, and they'll be reluctant to shoot once they realize who's there. They'll be easy to take out."

"That means we'll be inside with you guys, then," Dimara says. We've all thought it. We're either doing this together or we're moving on and making individual decisions, from here on out. And we're not ready to do that yet. We'll all be inside together. Split up into groups, as safe as we can possibly be, but making a move as a group. We all knew what we were getting into.

And a Sentinel isn't about to tell us that we shouldn't be getting involved, not when they got thrown into their own messes when they were just as young as we are now.

Sometimes, the younger you are, the harder you fight.

We're proof of it.

Seren's come in from the next room while I've been thinking, and she's remarkably spotless, for the amount of screaming going on. She sits in one of the few empty chairs left, and Luca looks down at her.

"Well, it's definitely Carnelia," she says. "He started talking. He said she was the one who shot Quinn."

The blankness in her eyes would be much more nerve-wracking if I knew she wasn't going to turn it back on us. I pity whoever gets in her way tomorrow. It's not going to end well for them, Sentinel or not.

"Meritt's sister?" Kelsea asks.

"That's not good," Rory says.

"No, that _is_ good," Luca insists. "The Capitol wouldn't have just taken random members out of Two to protect them, they'd have taken the whole group. Which means we know who they all are, provided nothing's happened to any of them. They'll have a sniper probably waiting for us, some sort of defense system set up outside. Probably bombs buried around the outskirts. That's all good to know."

Says him. How am I supposed to go to sleep tonight knowing I could be blown to smithereens tomorrow before I've even done anything? It's a good thing I didn't have this knowledge when I wondered what I was supposed to tell Emmett. By now he'd be having a heart attack, and my parents too.

"We'll go over this again when all the victors are here," Luca says. "But we'll split everyone off, as best as we can. Don't go anywhere by yourself unless it's unavoidable, and definitely don't engage alone. Not unless you wanna die a premature death."

Yeah, no. I'm good on that front.

To be perfectly honest, though, I think some of us were thinking it, when we first got back. Death would've been a lot easier than going through all of this. Dealing with the reactions of everyone around us, wandering around in the bleak woods wondering what was going to happen.

But it's different now. We've re-found the things we were supposed to be living for in the first place, and just added each other to that.

Oddly enough, the Sentinels of all people are probably the ones who get that more than anybody.

"So what now?" Celia asks.

"Now," Luca says, a little cautiously. I really didn't think someone like him had the word caution in their vocabulary at all. "We need to go talk to some people who really, really should not be here at all."

Who, then? The victors are all still a little ways away, rapidly approaching. Everyone else we've needed to see has come and gone. Either sent back to the Academy, where they'll be safest, or pushed quickly back into their homes, like Seren's brothers. We can't chance anyone outside of ourselves right now.

"That's not cryptic at all," Blair mutters. "Who is it?"

It almost kind of looks like Luca would rather not say it at all, but not because he's worried. In fact, he just looks annoyed. An odd feeling to have, knowing exactly what he's getting into. Maybe they're just taught to feel other things, instead of a certain level of fear. It would certainly explain how he got in and out of the Capitol without a scratch, and how he got Seren out too in the same swoop.

I wish I could feel like that, right now. If I think about the possibility of anything happening to one of us tomorrow, it feels like a pit opens up in my stomach.

"The Gamemakers," Luca says after a moment, finished with a sigh. "And believe me when I tell you that I absolutely did not invite them."

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

I shouldn't be so nervous of people who are no longer actively looking to kill me.

The Gamemakers are the reason the nine of us are alive, or at least Cambria is. That still doesn't change the fact that they let fifteen of us die anyway, when they knew all along what was going to happen. Everyone's other allies. _Houston._

They all could have had the chance to live, but the opportunity is long gone now. There's no chance to wonder what could have happened if something had been done sooner. I don't really want to put that on Blair, either. Nine of us is far better than none at all, and there's no point in asking him why he couldn't have tried sooner. Why he didn't consider it.

Besides, I think almost dying afterwards excuses him from any future questions about it.

It's a good thing the Gamemakers aren't very close to us. I don't think I'd sleep very well tonight if they were.

"How did they even know that this was going on?"

"They probably overheard one of the guards talking about it, but they wouldn't tell me," Luca told them. "They left in the middle of the night when no one was paying attention. Chances are they figured out that Emori and Dyna were leaving Six and wanted to know why."

And they managed to get here unscathed, on top of everything else. That's pretty good, for a group of people who stick out more than anyone else does.

"So what do they think they're going to do?" Seren asks. "There's no way they're fighting them. They'll get us all killed."

"I'm gonna tell them all to stay put," Luca responds. "But as proven before I don't think they listen very well."

Age aside, they're really not very different from us. Sneaking around places they shouldn't be, refusing to listen to advice that will probably keep them the safest. They got people killed, we did the killing. It's not a far stretch.

This part of Two is just lots of gray, lots of warehouses. There's a very fine rain coming down, and I find myself looking at everyone else before I can tell myself not to. There's no harm in the rain anymore, no matter what our reactions say about it.

Rooke pulls his hood up over his head. Habit.

I look away.

Luca finally stops at one of the buildings and props open the door. The air is swirling with dust. It looks like an old factory. Most of the machines are rusted through, no longer of use to anyone. I don't think anyone comes this way much anymore. There's a reason we're hiding out in the old training center - no one's going to look there, for any reason. And no one would look here, either. A good hiding spot, like I said, for a group of people that would otherwise attract too much unwanted attention.

The noise of the door pulls someone out of the shadows pretty quickly. Definitely one of them, even if I can't remember her name.

"Oh," she says. Her voice falls slightly. "Hi?"

"Where's Cambria?"

She scampers off, shouting her name. Tanis squeezes through the doorway behind me, shaking out her wet sleeves. She makes a face. I was really hoping us all hating the rain now was a joke, but it appears not.

I brush some of the water off her shoulder and Cambria appears. She doesn't come down the stairs, and instead leans herself against the railing that overlooks us. Watching her look at Luca is genuinely uncomfortable. I'd probably be looking at him if the same way, if he'd decided to shoot and kill someone I loved that much. But at the end of the day, even if they didn't get over it, they set it aside.

It's a good thing they did.

"Who told you what was going on here?"

"No one," Cambria says simply. Luca doesn't look amused, and I don't really feel that way either. There's no way she's telling the truth.

"You know you're not getting involved, right?" he asks.

"Says you," she fires back. "Friendly reminder that you all wouldn't be standing here right now if it wasn't for me. I think at this point I should get more of a say in what happens than I'm currently getting. Which is approximately none."

"Friendly reminder that you'd have killed us all if I hadn't decided to jump out of a fucking building," Blair mutters, and then slips back out the door. I'm honestly feeling the same kinda way. Why did we all feel the need to come here, after Seren and Luca? Whatever they wanted to talk with her about, we didn't need to get involved. Like Cambria, it just kind of feels like we have to. We have to see everything through, or nothing at all.

It's pretty clear that Cambria isn't going to listen to a thing we have to say anyway. We're one thing. I don't think I'd listen to me either, if I was even a sliver of a rational adult. But she's got a lot of nerve, looking at the guy who killed her husband without being afraid of him.

I can't even manage to look her in the eye, and she did nothing to me.

Not directly, anyway.

"I think I'm gonna go back," I say quietly. Blair's probably already walking back, and I think if we all start to trickle out one by one then everyone else will follow. There's really no point to all of this. We have bigger things to focus on, like not dying tomorrow. We still have to wait for the victors, and go over the plans again, and get used to the feeling of holding a gun in our hands when we really shouldn't have to.

"Yeah, I'm coming with you," Dimara says.

Blair's already disappeared from the alleyway. It's a good thing he knows all of the places here, or I'd be slightly worried. It also means we have to find our way back unassisted, but it wasn't that far to begin with.

"I feel like I just wasted a lot of energy for absolutely no reason," Dimara admits.

"Yeah," I murmur. No one else has followed us out, _yet._ I'll give it a half hour, by the time we get back, and then I think everyone else will be too. The two of them are probably going to argue themselves into a circle, and I know Dimara's tired of that. I don't really have the energy for it either.

"Promise me something," Dimara starts, and I look up at her. There's still no sign of Blair. Apparently he's more annoyed by all of this than I gave him credit for.

"What?"

"Tomorrow, when we get Audrel inside, you need to stay with her."

I feel like I should have seen this coming. That's pretty much step one. Get Audrel inside, a floor down from ground level, into what theoretically should be the control room, if they haven't thoroughly destroyed it. From there she can get us all in contact with each other, use what cameras exist in the building to try and help us. It's pretty much the most important thing.

I think they said they were leaving Linnet and Orick with her, to keep watch, but never anything about me.

There was no point in admitting out-loud how terrified I was. It's not a surprise. Even the people who are trained to fight and killed are worried about who they're gonna be facing tomorrow. This isn't another teenager in an arena.

"Alright," I agree. She looks at me in surprise.

"I really thought you were gonna put up more a fight about that."

"C'mon, even I have to admit that there's no chance I'm gonna be fighting someone three times my size, let alone win. I think you guys are gonna have enough to worry about. I don't want to make it worse."

Being with Audrel is actually one of the few ways that I can make sure they're okay, keep tabs on them. Anywhere else and I won't know what's going on. I won't know who's in danger, or what's going to happen while I'm on the opposite side of the building.

Besides, I think a part of this is realizing when you need to step up and when you need to step back.

There's no point in turning fourteen in less than two weeks, now, if I'm not doing any growing up.

"You know," Dimara says. "Thirteen year olds typically aren't very smart."

"I'm _here_ ," I point out. "Do you think that's smart?"

"Fair enough."

At least in that respect I'm not the only one who's thoughts may or may not be backwards. We all ended up here, with very little hesitation behind our actions.

It's hard to tell, if everyone else would have done the same. Maybe the other fifteen kids who did die wouldn't have come here willingly. Maybe they wouldn't have wanted to fight a battle that wasn't supposed to be theirs at all.

It feels a little bit wrong, to think that there's a chance that we _were_ supposed to be the ones that survived.

There's an even stronger chance that it's not the truth. Maybe we're all going to die tomorrow.

I wasn't scared of it, come the ninth day, and I don't know if I really am right now, either.

But like I said. It's all part of growing up.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

I really don't enjoy feeling responsible for everyone else.

The second Dimara leaves with Kelsea I feel like it's my job to get everyone back. Nadir, alright, she can walk just fine on her own, but I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that some combination of Vance, Tanis and Rooke will manage to get lost on the way back, and knowing Rory, he'd probably get lost with them so they weren't on their own the entire time.

It's like watching a group of toddlers. And to think Kelsea's the youngest of us by far.

Nadir has at least managed to herd Tanis away from leading Rooke straight into a minefield of puddles, so that's one small mercy. That doesn't help the fact that I'm pretty sure there's mud on my face from where one of them accidentally splattered it upwards.

But I'll live. I hope.

"Alright, get inside," I demanded. "No need to do anything else weird in a place we're really not welcome."

" _I_ wasn't even doing anything," Vance points out, and then Tanis drives her shoulder hard enough into his to send him stumbling inside. We are all acting strangely okay about all of this, for some reason. I think most people would be spending their possible last day crying, reminiscing, just sitting there praying to whoever was listening to protect them.

I think we have a good shot. But what I think doesn't matter.

Most other people would have gone running by now. Honestly, though, when eight out of the nine of us were supposed to die anyway, it kind of snaps thing into perspective. Do I want to die? Obviously not. Do I want any of them to, either? I don't even really want to think about it. Even if we're not really physically prepared, I think the mental side of things is actually something we might have a handle on. It's kind of shocking, really.

What's also shocking is that Blair actually made it back here after leaving us all, although I'm pretty convinced he's managed to fall asleep in his previous chair with no one to bug him. That, or he's faking it to avoid talking to us.

Probably the latter.

I drop myself down in the chair next to Dimara. "Wish we could just get it over with."

"Do you think it was smart, to leave the two of them with Cambria?" Rooke asks.

"What, were you going to drop yourself between them if something went wrong? If things got _violent?_ "

He clearly didn't think about that bit. I don't know if any of us would have, honestly. That would've gotten uglier than anything I've ever seen, and I had to start a fight with my own blood to even get on the stage. A group of Gamemakers versus a guy who's already killed one in the past and a victor who I really think has stopped giving a shit, at least since yesterday.

"Some of the victors are here," Dimara tells us. "Or at least that's what Audrel said. Some of the others went out to talk to them, about the plans."

"Hope they have an easier time remembering them than I am." My head's been spinning a bit, since everything was explained. It's not even that complicated. We all know what we're supposed to be doing, who we're supposed to be killing. It has been made easier, now that Luca and the others know exactly who it is that we'll be up against. Get in, kill them, get out. Don't die in the process. Fix the world.

You know, really simple stuff.

The door to the other room opens very suddenly, and Meritt peers in. I see Rory's eyes go very wide, at the amount of blood that's all over his hands. I think it would be ten times more alarming if my hands hadn't had the same amount of blood on them a few weeks back. Up until now, I hadn't even noticed the very distinct lack of screaming from the other room.

"Where'd Seren and Luca go?"

"To talk to Cambria."

Curse Sentinels and their ability to keep emotions off of their face whenever they damn well please. If Meritt feels some kind of way about that, he sure doesn't show it. It's almost kind of annoying.

"Well, when they get back, I wanna talk to them."

"Why? What did you find out."

"Apparently good old titan squad isn't intact as we thought. One of them died a few years ago."

Well, that's good, isn't it? Or at least it should be. Meritt's somehow managing to make it not sound like a good thing, though, which probably means it isn't.

"Is that not good?" Dimara asks. At least someone's thinking the same way I am right now. "If we have him here and one of them's dead, that's only ten still hiding out. That's one less person for us to kill tomorrow."

"Apparently he died not long after they brought the whole group to the Capitol, and they replaced him. Wouldn't surprise me if I'm only here because I was the original replacement. They never liked to screw with the numbers. Once you take a piece out, whole machine shuts down. Usually."

And where would we be today, if his group had shut down after losing him? Maybe Seren being there helped, but Seren is most definitely not Meritt. Not even close. Even her current anger doesn't compare to the fact that he's standing in front of us right now looking completely unbothered about the fact that he's been interrogating a guy in the opposite room without a care in the world for it.

"Can you get him to tell you who it is?" Blair asks.

"No."

"Why not? Is he refusing to talk?"

"No."

"Then why?"

"Because he's dead."

Well, that's one way to shut a very nosy group of teenagers up, and really fucking fast. Rooke goes back to staring at the ceiling, and after a moment Tanis puts her head down on the table. Both of which are pretty appropriate reactions.

"Weren't you... you know, not supposed to kill him yet?" Rory asks hesitantly. Him outright addressing Meritt is a sight in itself.

"I didn't kill him, he bled out. That's not my issue."

And judging by the look on Rory's face it would be, but there's no way he's going to open his mouth and say that to him. That's probably the most Meritt thing that Meritt could possibly say to him, and it's done the job well. Whatever the job even was. I don't think any of us are really willing to say what we're thinking. He's on our side. Probably a little zombie-like, probably still only got his head screwed on half straight, but at least he won't be at my throat tomorrow. If he's going to kill someone, it might as well be our enemies.

"So," Meritt says. "When they get back, let them know."

Literally every single one of us nods. Blair gives him a thumbs up, eyes still closed. The door closes with a soft click, and it doesn't take long before we're all glancing around at each other.

"Jesus," Vance mutters.

One down, eleven to go. It would be worse, knowing that someone had just died in the other room, but I'm still thinking about what the group of them did to the victor's village. What they've done to this District in just a few days. They'll destroy the whole place, given the time.

The quicker they're gone, the better. Maybe I'd have some trouble convincing the others of that, but everyone deep down knows it's the truth.

At this point, it's tomorrow or nothing.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

"Whoever across the room that's snickering is gonna eat a pillow in about five seconds," Dimara says.

I don't even think the sun's gone down yet. There's no windows in this room to tell, and the door's shut. I can't see much, other than my own hands. I'm exhausted, we all are, but not a single person has dropped off into sleep yet.

Early day tomorrow, plans to remember, and not a single one of us can shut our brains off.

The laughing stops for all of three seconds before it picks up again.

"It's Tanis," Nadir accuses.

"Dude, you're the one making me laugh."

"It's really great to know that I'm trying to sleep in a room full of twelve year old girls at a slumber party," Blair mutters, and I don't see much of him moving just to my right except for a very wild wave of his arms and then what I'm assuming is him putting a pillow over his own head.

"I take offense to that," Kelsea says quietly, and Vance snorts. I don't know if it's that Tanis starts laughing at again, or if Nadir's still trying to rile her up and not get caught. Both seem pretty likely at this point. I don't really know what Blair is trying to accomplish with the pillow. He can probably still hear everything almost clear as day, so maybe he's hoping he makes himself pass out after a few minutes.

Whoever in the world thought letting us all sleep in the room clearly made a mistake. At first it was awkward, and weird, but I think sleeping outside of a hovercraft and then in a bunch of ruins in the middle of the woods would be weird no matter who you were with. Now we're all healed up and in actual beds and apparently so deliriously tired that everything and anything is funny.

Or at least it is to Tanis. I really have to give her kudos for that. If I get more than five minutes of sleep tonight it'll be a miracle. It feels my stress level should be high enough to shoot me right through the roof.

"Has everyone else failed to realize that we could all die tomorrow?" I ask eventually. Up until the words finally coming out, I had been doing a pretty great job of keeping that thought buried. Everyone else had probably been shocked, at my lack of bringing it up. Now that I'm laying here there's just nothing else to think about, unless I fall asleep sooner rather than later.

"Your optimism is stunning as always, Rooke," Nadir responds calmly. Blair pulls every single one of the blankets over his head.

"Okay, but can everyone seriously go to sleep though?" Rory asks.

I'm _trying._ It's just kind of hard, when I have a literal scythe tucked under my bed and I know fully well why I brought it, why Beckett wanted me to pick it back up. Me, getting the chance to shoot someone? It's unlikely. At least I've considered killing someone with the scythe, once upon a time, but even Rory knows that thinking it and me actually attempting to go through with it are very different things.

I really don't think he faults me for it anyway, after what happened.

"Rory, you can't say that and then let Celia sleep with you," Dimara insists. "Celia, he just said he wants to sleep."

"What?" Blair mutters from under the blankets, clearly confused and completely unwilling to come out from under them.

"He can sleep with me just fine," Celia argues. "Tried, tested and proven."

"Too much information," Vance says.

"Shut up, you know that's not what I meant—"

I honestly think even Blair is laughing now, but it's kind of hard to call him out on it when he's hiding from all of us. At least that's a bit better than him post the victor's village being half burnt to the ground. Laughter is a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately for us, it doesn't really matter what we do tonight. We can sit up all night and laugh and talk and not a single person who looks us in the eye tomorrow is going to care. A Sentinel isn't going to go easy on us because we're tired, or not equipped for this, not trained. They'll just maybe toy with us a second longer once they figure it out, before they decide to kill us.

"Okay, seriously," Dimara says. "Everyone go to sleep."

She sounds just as serious as the other few times, but for whatever reason everyone goes quiet at that one. As soon as everyone stops talking it's almost _too_ quiet.

Which just leaves me to have more personal time with my extremely worried brain. I could go back to Nine with a papercut and Beckett's going to be pissed at me, no doubt. What are the chances that absolutely nothing happens to me tomorrow? That's probably why they're making me go with Rory and Celia. Two trained Careers as opposed to one, and I think because of what happened in the Games they might just try harder to protect me for it.

I wasn't lying, when I told Beck that I knew they would. But you don't always get the opportunity to follow through with protecting the people you're supposed to, when it comes down to it.

Maybe tomorrow they'll need me, and not the other way around. Stranger things have happened. And if that happens, I really can't afford to hesitate. I pretty much have to put all my thoughts about killing someone tomorrow aside, because if it's them or one of us, I already know who I'm picking.

It's not really as big of a deal as it should be.

I try to force my eyes closed. Try to quiet all the thoughts moving rapidly through my head, bouncing off of one another. It's hard, but even I have to sleep eventually. The lack of sleep in the Games caught up to me in the end. The sleepless night from earlier have to as well, at some point.

"Blair's just upset because he doesn't have a good excuse to sleep on someone anymore," Tanis says, a solid five minutes later. My eyelids had just started to droop.

Dimara starts laughing.

It pretty much all goes downhill from there.

* * *

Thanks for all the random follows in the past month or so, by the way. Unexpected but appreciated.

Until next time.


	50. Judgement Day

District Two; western quadrant.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

It's a really good thing the fear doesn't hit me until we're all about to load up in the cars.

If it had happened before that, I'd have feigned illness to get out of this for sure.

Not that anyone would have let me. Even seeing me reluctant and nervous Celia still would have thought nothing of dragging me out of the building and into the street regardless of who was watching. We go into this together. After how all of this started, it almost feels funny to even think those words. To think about how she said so many weeks ago now that we would never work. That she had taken two seconds in total to consider the idea and then promptly tossed it out the window of the speeding train.

Does that version of Celia even exist anymore? I'm not sure.

I don't think the same copy of me exists either, though, so it's not saying much. My mother was more reluctant to let me go into this than she was in the actual Games. We didn't even consider telling Lyria and Dorian, choosing to sneak off. Celia didn't once suggest that she had any desire to go home and tell her own family what was going on.

My family has ratcheted up all of their ability to care, and so has Celia, I guess. Just for me, and not the people she left back home.

All of the others are in the back of her mind now too, though. Maybe they take up all the reserve that Celia's got left, once she's done worrying about me, and there's none left for her actually family.

Or maybe she just considers everyone here her family now.

Because I think I do, too.

"Get in the car," Celia instructs, for what must be the fourth time. She's already managed to herd Rooke in. How I'm not exactly sure, but he's definitely in. Kelsea reaches out and squeezes me again before Celia forces me back into the open doorway, and I nearly fall in.

"No need to make this more almost weepy than it's gotten," she mutters; she climbs in after me before I'm even properly seated, and then slams the door shut.

"You let Dimara hug you like six times," Rooke points out.

"You have no proof of that."

If Rooke acquires a camera sometime in the near future, at least I'll know exactly who to blame.

That's implying that everything is all fine and dandy at the end of the day, and I don't want to be quite that optimistic yet. Unlike me, Celia would say, but I don't think anyone's daring to think like that right now. For all even Kelsea had been reassuring us this morning that we'd do exactly what we were told and things would go exactly to plan, I'm not even sure if she believes it.

And you know something's just gonna go to shit when even Blair says it should theoretically be fine.

"Do you think Blair also thought things would be fine when he decided to jump out of a building?" I ask suddenly, and both of them look at me. Celia's eyes narrow.

"What?" Rooke questions. Probably should've voiced out-loud my thoughts, before I spit that one out, but I wasn't exactly thinking.

I should probably start thinking, and fast.

"I'm not even gonna ask where that particular thought came from," Celia says calmly. I think deep down she's just as anxious about this whole mess as any of us are, but she's also not deluding herself into quite the state that I'm currently trying to.

Vance has finally managed to coerce Kelsea into the car just next to us, after Dimara. I know Blair, Nadir and Tanis loaded in easy enough. I don't even think Dimara giving Celia six hugs was an exaggeration at all. There were a lot of them going around, a lot of different combinations. Like I said, this is much more a family than any of us could have anticipated. Certainly not Blair, who said in that moment that he only cared about the four of us, and no one else. That's the furthest thing from the truth at this point, and he's not even trying to deny it.

Ronan finally gets into the driver's seat, and then Costa into the other side. She only looks back at us for a second.

"You know, I never asked how you guys got here. Most of the other victors got hovercrafts, but you guys didn't."

"Well, it certainly didn't involve Costa stealing one of the Peacekeeper vehicles."

"Obviously not," I say, and Costa snickers. "Why would I _ever_ think that?"

Unfortunately for me, it's all too easy to imagine. Celia would do the same thing. Theo probably actively encouraged her, if Ronan didn't get there first. If the group of us are a family then I think the Four's are as well, but Rooke doesn't look worried about it.

"Alright, listen to me," Ronan says. "Make my life easier, just for today. Try not to go running off. Just stay with us. I already feel bad about having put you through the bullshit that was those Games and the aftermath of it all, so just let me take care of you. Or at least let me keep you in my eyesight."

Yeah, Celia letting someone take care of her isn't really gonna happen, but hopefully she at least won't go running off. I'm hoping it won't come to that with either Rooke or myself. Neither of us are going to _want_ to run off.

We're still far enough away that I can imagine a scenario where this goes perfectly. I know the government complex is huge, bigger than any building I've ever been in outside of the Capitol. There's eleven, not twelve, very dangerous people waiting for us inside it. They are one hundred and fifty percent going to attempt to kill me, with no hesitation.

I accept all those facts, and then bury them somewhere deep.

"Got it," I respond eventually, and Ronan gives us a thumbs up before he puts the key in the ignition.

"Do you actually know how to drive?" Rooke thinks to ask. A few of the cars up ahead are already moving, and Ronan is very slowly edging us after them, into more of a group formation. Or at least that's what I'm hoping it looks like.

Ronan shrugs. "Not really."

I bury that fact too, next to all of the other ones.

It's not something I want to be thinking of, in the midst of everything else.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

I spend the entire ride there staring out the window and pretending I'm going somewhere else.

It worked on the train to the Capitol, for a little while. That's probably why I spent so much time isolated in my own room, with or without Cade. That time seems very far away now, like I've aged literal years since that moment. I wasn't under the illusion that I had the best chance at winning, but I wasn't defeated yet either. I knew there was a chance.

There's always a chance.

There's always a chance that something could go completely wrong, too. I could have died when I fought Anya, if she had got a lucky hit in, or if Zion had been a different person and decided to fight back. The whole time we were escaping, or out in the woods I could have died, or now that I think about it, if Thane had been able to put a hand on me that day back in Twelve if Blair hadn't gotten in-between us.

It feels like every single thing in my life is just an in-between moment, waiting for something where I'm supposed to die but won't.

This car ride is no different.

Blair managed to shove Tanis in the middle, where the least amount of space is, so she spends most of the ride leaning around my shoulder and watching, or craning her neck between the two front seats. Blair's mostly just been fiddling with a knife that I'm pretty sure he's been keeping in his jacket, a clear distraction from all of this. He knows his brother is safe, and his friends are far away.

But if we lose this, they're done for too. I think everyone in the country's done for.

No one will know what they are, really, if the Sentinels on our side die here today. Not knowing what you're up against when they're unbelievably dangerous and unpredictable will result in the deaths of hundreds. Thousands.

At this point, even if I didn't want to do this for myself, I have to think about Jericho, and my parents who let me go because they knew they couldn't stop me either way.

They don't deserve this. They never deserved any of this.

At least that seems to be a reoccurring theme.

We see the complex from a ways away, a huge stretch of interconnected buildings sprawled across the grounds, the mountains far away in the distance. Everything just seems very quiet. No sign of anyone or anything, the houses at the fringes all long deserted, from people running or from people that have already died. Besides the village, who knows what kind of damage they've done elsewhere. It's kind of scary to think about. The sky is gray and overcast, leftover from the rain yesterday. Anything that is out here is going to be decently well-hidden, so long as they want to be.

Luca's been very steady driving thus far, but that all goes out the window in two seconds flat. He grabs the radio from the front dash and flicks it on.

"Hold on, everyone stop. I'm serious."

Blair's head snaps up, the knife quickly disappearing back into his jacket. From this angle I can't see much, other than the main drive and the grand doors to the entrance of the main building, but it turns out that's all I need to see.

The doors are opening. I find myself holding my breath, and Tanis' hand is white-knuckled up against the back of Seren's seat, all of us waiting for something that we aren't sure about.

One by one, all the cars stop. It's a good thing we all moved together, because for whatever reason, I feel safer in the midst of everyone else.

Only one person steps outside, both hands raised into the air. There's something wrong about every inch of him, and then Luca opens the car door. He doesn't step out. It just seems like an acknowledgement, a response to whoever's walking out across the terrace with very little regard for his own life. One person facing down an armada of vehicles, hands raised, defenseless.

"Who is that?" Blair asks quietly.

"District Three," Luca responds. "Acts like a negotiator, kind of like Alessia does."

"A negotiator?" Tanis asks, slightly incredulous. "You don't think they're really willing to agree with anything to us, do you? They're not going to surrender."

"No," he agrees. "They're fucking with us because they know they can."

He picks the radio back up, and even though I'm sure the unspoken agreement to stay in the car is already widespread, Luca repeats the words anyway. If anything it just reaffirms the fact that the more they stick together in all of this the easier it will go. One person doesn't look scary when they're one united front like this, not with his hands up.

Blair opens his door.

"Do not," I hiss, but he doesn't move. I'm sure he would be, if he didn't have someone here telling him not to. If Seren wasn't already shooting him a death glare from the front seat.

"Want me to shoot him?" Kane asks over the radio, voice very quiet. Luca doesn't respond.

 _Not yet_ , is all I can think. There is a purpose behind this, whatever it may be. I'm sure of it. Three is walking around up there like the flutter of a white flag in the breeze, hands empty, slowly getting closer and closer to the stairs that will lead down to the road. I try to focus less on him and more on the rest of the buildings. There are doors on both sides, too. A lot of windows. There's a building right near the back that's wide and flat enough at the top to land a hovercraft on. Still no sign of anyone else, which doesn't seem right. They wouldn't leave him on his own. Surely they know he's not getting back in that building, not before someone gets a bullet in him. There's no way.

The car window starts rumbling, very faintly, where my shoulder is pressed into it.

Seren clearly notices it at the same second I do, but everyone else seems preoccupied with the guy still, watching him with calm, blank eyes, waiting for the moment that something happens.

"Luca," Seren says, very calmly. I have no idea at all how she manages that, and I'm slightly envious of that.

I don't know whether it's her saying her name, or the fact that it gets louder. It's less of a shaking and more of an actual noise now. He leans forward to look out the front windshield, directly at the sky. Blair leans just enough out the open door that I feel a spike of nervousness form in the pit of my stomach, and have the urge to reach across Tanis and pull him back in.

"They fucked us," Luca says, like he says that all the time.

"What does that mean?" Tanis asks. I think she knows exactly what that means and is just more prone to sticking her fingers in her ears until the problem goes away. I know that's what I'd do right now, if I had the choice, but I don't. That choice flew out the window long ago, the second this guy stepped outside the front doors.

"Oh, shit," Blair says. He's still leaning out of the car, and I'm about to lean over and kill him instead of pull him back in, if he keeps it up. It's like he sees something I don't, eyes focused on a point in the sky that's blocked by the roof of the car from where I am. I don't know whether or not I even want to see. It's not going to change anything.

I don't see it go overhead, but I see the jet fly past through the back windshield, but even as the noise fades off something else doesn't. Something whistling through the air, cutting through the sky between the ground and where the jet had been flying.

Seren reaches back for Blair.

I see something hit the ground, two cars ahead of us. Another slams directly into the roof of another one, and there's the thud of more hitting the ground all around us, and Blair's gaze switches between the sky and the ground, too close to us. Way too close to us.

There's no beeping. No terrifying second before they go off.

It just happens.

The entire world around us explodes into flames.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

Something explodes right in front of me.

That's the last thing I remember, for a little while.

I land twenty feet away from the car, and hit the ground so hard I must black out for a few moments, because the last thing I remember is seeing everything on fire and an overturned car just in front of me and only being able to think _bombs, they're bombing us_ , before my head gives up on me.

I only wake back up, everything swimming in my vision, because there's a burning piece of debris so close to my head that it was starting to hurt.

Laying there for a moment doesn't even seem smart, but it's all I can manage. There's blood all over my face. Definitely hit the ground too hard. I can't just catch a break, can't have a few days without something happening. After that it becomes a mission of trying to figure out which way I can even came from. That unfamiliar, overturned car is still in front of me. There were victors in that car, people I knew, people who were just trying to _help_.

My attention quickly switches to panic, when I start thinking about everyone. Luca's door was open, too, and there's no way of telling if he went flying or not. Seren may have gone after him, if that happened. If she's okay.

Tanis and Nadir should be fine, but there's no way to know that for sure. Anything could have happened. If this car in front of me overturned then the one we were in could have as well, and they could both be injured, or dead, and I feel the urge to throw up even thinking about it, so soon. This can't be happening, not now, not before we've even done anything.

I lurch to my feet and nearly stumble into the car. There's a body on fire, already blackened beyond recognition. Through all the smoke and fire I can't even see the doors anymore, and instead I'm just choking on the air, trying desperately to see where the jet's gone even though I can't hear it at all, with how badly my head is ringing.

There are other people on their feet, too. Running, and screaming, and I can't catch sight of a face that actually means anything.

Bullets start raining down across the ground, and I dive back behind the nearest chunk of flaming debris. Someone screams again, and I hear the word _sniper s_ houted in the middle of all of it. Of course there's a sniper. They bottle necked us all right here, where we could hardly move. Bombed us all straight to hell. Pick off the people that start running.

"Blair!"

That cuts through, clearer than anything else has. I see Tanis running through the smoke two seconds before I reach out and grab her. A bullet slams into the ground that her feet had just been running through and I pull her up behind cover, still struggling to breathe. She's covered in soot, peppered with bits of broken glass, but otherwise looks mostly intact.

"Nadir," I gasp out. "Where, where the fuck is she?"

"The car flipped," Tanis explains. I don't think she's yelling, but she might as well be. "I don't know what happened to Seren and Luca, I don't know where they went. I crawled out before he started shooting but the whole middle of the car caved in and I can't move the door to get her out, and the front of it is on fire and if we don't get her out—"

"Stop talking," I plead, because I know all too well what's going to happen to a car that's on fire for too long and what will happen to Nadir if she's still in there when it happens. I need a second to think, which I'm definitely not going to get right now.

"Stop freaking out," Tanis says.

"I'm not freaking out."

"Yes you are. _Let's go_."

I don't get a chance to get to my feet before Tanis yanks me up off the ground, waiting for me to struggle back to my feet. Clearly the sniper's focused on someone else, now. No bullets come raining down towards us, and Tanis holding onto my arm is probably still a good thing, or else I'm certain I would lose her. Not a thing I need to happen, when I do actually think I'm starting to freak out. Now I'm freaking out about the prospect of already freaking out, which is just making it worse. I need to quit it.

It's just kind of hard, in the middle of everything else.

Tanis takes me in the opposite direction that I thought I even come from, so it's a good thing that she found me in the first place. I recognize the car from a way off, even upside down and on fire. Tanis goes skidding to the ground on her hands and knees behind it and I follow suit. I can see Kane not far off, rotating between taking shots at the guy who must be on the roof and the one still in front of the doors, who ducks back into cover whenever he even gets a gun pointed in his direction. It doesn't look like any of them are hitting.

The side of the car that Tanis must have crawled out of is the more intact bit, which is exactly why Nadir's stuck. The door next to her has crumbled like a piece of paper, the middle of the car dented straight inwards, forcing her into one little spot.

A bullet hits the ground next to my leg and I flinch. There's no room for this. One of us is going to get shot if we all just keep laying here.

"Tanis, go to Kane, and then when he's got them distracted get as close to the building as you can."

"Are you serious?"

"I can get the door off and get her out but not if I'm concerned about you getting _shot_ because there's not enough room for both of us."

If we all make it out of this, which looking less and less likely by the second, then Tanis is going to beat me to hell later. Something I'll gladly take provided we are all still alive by then.

"We have to look for everyone else too," she says.

"I know," I insist. "So get started on looking."

Definitely getting beat up later for this. She flattens herself to the ground for a second, clearly saying something to Nadir even though I can hardly see either of them, and then gets to her feet and shoves me back to the ground in her place. It means I don't really see her take back off, and can't turn around unless I want to risk getting shot myself.

The bullets sound too close, now. I reach down, through the gap between the crushed door and the frame, and Nadir's hand grabs mine, holding on tight.

"You alive down there?"

"Not for much longer, I'd imagine."

"Thanks for reminding me," I grunt, and flatten myself along the ground, up along the edge of the car. The door won't be that hard to move, not when there's a metal arm in play, but I'm still trying to keep an eye on where the bullets are coming from, still trying to pop up every once in a while to make sure that Tanis hasn't gotten herself killed.

At least this far down I can see Nadir, now, who much to her credit doesn't look like she's panicking nearly as much as I am.

Was. Seeing her alive makes me feel a lot better.

I'm not really that prepared to let go of her, so she keeps a hold on one hand while I focus on bending the door back on the other. The hinges are already warped from the heat, the door weakened from going over, and some of the bolts pop off and scatter all along the ground next to me. The heat is becoming almost unbearable at this point, so I can't imagine how she's feeling inside. Not great, if I know anything at all.

When it's pushed back a few inches I slide back up and brace my back against it, allowing a small gap to stay open for more than a few seconds. The supports where the window once was are hot to the touch, fighting to stay together. I don't really want to pull her through an entire mess of broken glass and bolts, but we don't really have a choice. It's that or burn to death, and just because one person's come back from that doesn't mean I'm willing to bet my entire life on it happening to us too.

Nadirs' other arm appears first, and then she grabs the edge of the car and pushes outwards while I'm still holding onto her. She sprawls out in a heap along the ground right next to me, and there still isn't much room for two people to actually have sufficient cover here. I stay on the ground when she pops back up. Her head's bleeding too. I still think mine's worse.

"She's at the building, Kane covered her."

"No one's with her?"

"No."

Funny enough, I think Nadir trusts Tanis more on her own than she does me. Tanis on her own normally is fine, though, not when she's surrounded by eleven psychopaths who are either shooting at her or waiting to rip her open.

"Okay," I say, and try to swallow. It hurts. "Go to Kane, see if you can go after her."

"And where the fuck are you going?" she wonders. "You can't—"

"I have to find Seren," I explain. "Now that I know you're okay I need to make sure she is, too, and I can't do that if I'm running away from all of this."

To be honest, I want to. It would be so much easier to just go with Nadir and get the fuck away from any sort of immediate danger, but I can't do that. Seren didn't ever once think of leaving me in the woods, and I can't just leave her out here. Sure, she might already might be inside. She could be fine. But I need to know, before I do anything else.

"You're the stupidest person alive, you know that?" she tells me.

"I'm sure this will come as a shock, but you're not the first person to tell me that."

"Your brother?"

I nod, and if this wasn't the situation we were in right now we'd probably both be laughing, but I don't know how to manage that right now. Clearly she doesn't either, and she doesn't know what to say, either. What is there to say, when you're looking someone in the eyes for what could very well be the last time?

I thought that too, when they got me out of the car in Six, and drove off with her.

I survived then, even though I shouldn't have.

If that didn't kill me, then I'm not letting this, either.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

I really should have just expected all hell to break loose.

Wherever we go chaos seemingly follows. That's just how it goes now, apparently, and Kali is going to be absolutely livid with me when she finds out, especially after I refused to let Kali come along and get involved in all of this in the first place.

I don't know if I'm holding onto Audrel or if she's holding onto me. Orick's got Kelsea, and Linnet's leading the way, but that doesn't explain the age old question of wherever the fuck Vance ended up.

I can't see him. I know Kelsea can't either, judging by the look on her face. We're getting shot at and everything vaguely hurts from all of the explosions going on and besides the few people around me, everyone else in sight is either lying limp on the ground or running away.

There are Peacekeepers, too, and I'm watching them fall or take off in the opposite direction, once they catch sight of what's going on up ahead. Valiant's not far behind me, and I know he's trying to watch my back but I don't know how much that's worth, when we can hardly see.

Linnet nearly slams into the wall of the first building through the smoke. The bullets are far beyond us now - we shouldn't be in any danger from them. That doesn't mean shit for everyone else that's still out there too, for all the people that have already died because our plans meant nothing in the long run, save for one. We still have to get Audrel to the control room, that's all this is about.

The glass in the nearest window shatters under the weight of the gun that Orick slams into it, and then Audrel's arm goes free of my grip as she clambers up and over. I force Kelsea in next, and then don't have a choice when someone boosts me through after her.

For all the commotion outside, it's oddly quiet inside. Audrel's pointing a gun down towards one end of the hall, and I pull my own out even as Linnet hops through the window after me. It still feels strange, to be holding a gun in the middle of this, but a spear isn't going to do anything right now. I wish it would, but that's foolish thinking, and clearly we've been doing too much of that this far.

"Vance is still out there," Kelsea says in a rush. "We can't just leave him, something could happen."

I knew that, but I still needed to make sure that Kelsea got in here fine too. Now they can watch her. The second Orick slips in the window I've got my hands on the sill and am about to jump out. Valiant's still just outside, and he turns back towards me the second I'm about to swing a leg over.

"Stay in there!" he yells. "I'll look for him!"

Valiant will find him, that I'm certain of, but it's what happens in-between then that worries me.

He's more responsible than any of the victors, watching over them all whenever things get rough, but they already took all of Two's away, save for Seren and Blair.

Anything could happen, once he disappears.

The jet goes spiraling over ahead again, and now that I'm inside I _watch_ the bombs fall, slow-motion, before they hit the ground. There's a second of nothing before it starts exploding all over again, whatever was left of the cars flying and splintering through the air.

Whoever's in that jet is catching some of the Peacekeepers in it's wake too, but clearly they don't care. Small sacrifices to win the real war.

"Find Ivory too!" I shout after him. He hardly turns as he goes running back off, just a wave of the hand to acknowledge my words before he's gone.

I also know damn well that Ivory can take care of herself better than anyone, but everyone also thought that about Cicely, didn't they?

I guess Two's aren't as invincible as we all thought they were.

"He'll find him," I say, hoping that my voice comes out more confident than it really is. Kelsea wiggles her way under my arm to look, too. For everything going outside, for all the danger inside this exact building, I feel safer than I know I really am. Linnet's already begun creeping down the hall, towards where the floor opens up, a staircase leading downwards to the left. Orick's waiting for us, expectantly, and if I was him right now I'd be yelling at us to get a move on.

I think he gets it.

This is already taking a toll on us.

All of the people we know, that could be dead. Valiant may find Vance but he may not be alive, when he does. It's the same with Ivory. Every person I came here with could be dead right now, and if that's the truth, then we'll all be next.

You can't win wars alone.

"Let's go," he urges quietly, and Kelsea squeezes my arm.

I take the last glimpse out that window, at the fire and the smoke and what very well could be the last glimpse of the outside world I ever get. It's pretty terrible. Like I said, the entire area laid before my eyes could be filled with the corpses of people I care about, of people who I thought would be in my future.

That's why this still has to work. That's why we have to make sure the first phase of this goes through.

If it doesn't, then it's over before it ever really began.

* * *

 **Emori Arker, 17 years, Victor of the 159th Hunger Games.**

* * *

She's way too used to knowing exactly what shutting down feels like.

After what Kal put her through, and then Luca the past few years, you could say she's an expert at that sort of stuff.

So when she sees the glint of the rifle from the guy still standing on the terrace, two seconds before a bullet rips right through the side of Dyna's neck, she doesn't know what she's supposed to be feeling.

Her mentor had been five, six feet in front of her. Emori had been about ready to clamber to her feet, when the rifle was turned away, and Dyna had gotten there first. The rifle swings back, and there's no crack of a gunshot, over everything else. No grand announcement of any of it. Dyna collapses backwards, nearly on top of her, and there's so much _blood,_ and Emori doesn't even move because she knows she's dead before she even hits the ground.

All of the other noise fades out, slowly, with her sitting on the ground next to Dyna's corpse, trying to make sense of the woman who all but saved her life as a dead body.

It's like that same moment, after she knew Kal was gone for good. The numbness creeping in. That time, though, it was the first. It was unfamiliar, and a little terrifying. This time it's an old friend, settling back into her bones to protect her from the onslaught of emotions that are trying to follow. It's stopping her from screaming, from drawing attention to herself and winding up dead next.

She doesn't know where Luca comes from, but what she does know is that one second she's resolved herself to sitting there for all of eternity and the next he's lifting her up off the ground. She doesn't manage to get her legs under her, but it doesn't matter when all he does is drag her several feet away, behind what's left of one of the cars.

She sees Seren, very briefly before she goes tearing off towards someone Emori can't even really see. Hollis is there, and the one who grabs her arm when Luca leans back around the car trying to see what's going on.

He's going to force her to get out of here. Either back the way they came or into the building. Like she said, Kal screwed them all up.

In more ways than one.

Hollis is holding onto her, so she uses that leverage to pull her around the other side, when Luca's not looking.

"Help me," she explains, before Hollis can get a word in otherwise. She's gonna have to get out of here fast, before Luca stops either of them. Which will happen much sooner than later.

She gets away faster than she expected. They're a solid ways away before Luca even notices.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he shouts after them. It's a good thing Seren gets back then, Blair on her heels, or he'd have come running after them by now. Small saving graces here.

"Distract him!"

His eyes flit wildly between the two of them and Three, who's still shooting. Judging by the lack of response he's not hitting anyone at this exact moment, but it's only a matter of time until he gets lucky again. Luca must notice what she already has - the fence around the edge of the building, and the crop of bushes lining it. As long as he's not looking this way, her and Hollis should be able to get around and get behind him.

And whatever Luca does, it starts to work.

She doesn't dare turn around to see, doesn't need something else to go wrong right before her eyes. They make it to the fence and Hollis helps boost her over, the metal ends ripping at her shirt as she lands with a thud on the other side, directly into the greenery. There's still no bullets coming hailing down this way; they must've gotten through.

Hollis goes right up against the building first, darting out and pressing herself against the wall a moment before Emori does.

She can't see much of the front anymore, but she can see Luca. He's firing back, now, putting bullets everywhere around him but nowhere in him.

And that's the point. With the bullets coming towards him, Three darts for cover, back to the pillars right in front of them. He skids around the corner and she watches his eyes widen, just the slightest bit, as he notices them. A shock, obviously.

She fires one bullet that misses wildly, and he goes diving out of the way again, but by then Hollis is already on him. She hits him square in the middle, both arms wrapped around him, and the two of them hit the ground with her on top of him.

Emori's not really worried, once Hollis slams into him. She can tell just by looking that he's not a fighter, that he was only out here shooting from a distance because that was all he was going to be able to do, in the midst of all the other fighting. He struggles frantically for a few seconds before he must realize how unmatched he is and then goes limp under her.

She picks up the gun that went skidding out of his hand when Hollis grabbed him. His eyes flicker to her, briefly, a small smile gracing his face.

"Hey, Hollis," he says, breathless. "Luca's getting the whole family involved, I see."

"Tell me where Carnelia and Lucien are."

He doesn't even care about her. One look and he's done. He looks back to Hollis, when she says it. He looks too smug for her liking.

"What, did Zayd not give that up?" he asks. "Not surprising. You really think any of us would give up any _worthwhile_ information? Empty words, Hollis, all of it. You know everything he said isn't going to matter in the long run."

'What happened to Scion, then?"

"Doesn't matter now, does it? I think you should be more concerned about who's in there _instead of him_."

Luca's been kind enough to tell her about Scion, their medic, someone who they apparently lost several years ago. Someone who wouldn't have been fighting, much like this one. Whoever replaced him is probably worse. Much worse.

"It doesn't matter," he repeats, a slight laugh in his voice. "It really doesn't—"

Hollis flattens a hand over his mouth, and while he's squirming again, looks up at her.

She pulls the trigger.

The recoil hits her so hard in the shoulder she goes stumbling back a few paces, and doesn't even see the bullet impact with his skull. She hears the blood splatter all over the concrete, though, and can see Luca standing off across the courtyard, watching. No judgement there. How in the world would he of all people get away with judging her about this?

"That make you feel better?" Hollis asks.

It's a weird feeling, going from having ice dumped inside you to fire. And while no one else outside of this would understand that being a good thing in the slightest, to Emori it is. Being angry is better than being nothing at all, and anger will help her get through this day more than anything else will.

She can mourn later. They all can.

"Yeah. Let's go."

* * *

For all of those who predicted this lack of me explaining a plan going to absolute and total shit: congratulations on being right, and congratulations on probably hating yourself for being right.

Not everything can be directly mentioned, death-wise, so I'll be updating the victor's blog (if anyone even looks at that anymore) and my newer whacky Sentinel blog for what's going on with them. Hopefully that makes it a bit easier for everyone trying to understand.

Any concerns, general yelling, or swearing, can be directed right at me.

Until next time.


	51. Watch The World Burn

District Two; Esterwick Government Complex, western quadrant.

* * *

 **Valiant Blackwood, 53 years, Victor of the 125th Hunger Games.**

* * *

It always was his job to protect them.

He's not about to forget about that now.

Even the older victors back in One always left the job to him; keeping everyone together. For years that's all Valiant's been trying to do. Keep them safe, keep everything together.

When they first started planning all this, when they first started talking about rebellion, he was terrified. He still is. All he could think about was the death, the bloodshed, and clearly they've all seen enough of that. He's always had it better than most. Didn't have to volunteer, but wanted to anyway. Didn't have to suffer to some of the lengths that the other victor's have.

But there was still always that lingering feeling, that he wasn't doing enough.

Maybe that's why he resorted to caring for everyone.

But now, striding back out into the flaming grounds, he's not so sure that he'll be able to do it. There's no telling what's really going on, in the middle of all of it. Even the houses beyond the property are up in flames, smoke pouring into the sky. The pilot doesn't really care what he's hitting. It's not going to just be them that takes hits in all of this. It's innocent people, bystanders to all of this rebellion who never asked for it in the first place.

All of this only means something if they do their job.

It's hard, though. The smoke is stopping him from making out half the people around him, the gunshots forcing him into cover just when he thinks he can see someone. It's blinding him, sending fiery stabs of pain through his throat every time he inhales. The ground is rough and uneven underfoot - one wrong step and he's going down, or triggering something that didn't go off the first time. The jet circles around again, lower this time, but nothing falls from the sky. Maybe the pilot's out, finally. That would be one small miracle, in the middle of all this.

There's a body, far on the terrace. He sees Emori go through a window and then Luca on her heels, Seren and Blair right behind him.

That's more people accounted for. He saw Tanis, before he got Dimara through. Nadir's with Kane, now, so she must not have been able to follow. It appears like the Fours have managed to stick together, but that must mean they're missing Rooke. Or maybe he just can't see them all. At least most of them have someone, most of them have a set of eyes to watch their back.

Not everyone, though. And he remembers the words _don't engage alone_ , ringing through his mind over and over again.

Alone equals death. That's something he he learned a very long time ago. This wasn't the first time he heard those words.

But it all flies out the window.

He's not sure how he thinks to look over his shoulder, one last time, when he had no reason to. But it's at that moment that his eyes finally land on Aveza. Mia and Kiero aren't far in front of her, and that's when he finally catches sight of Vance. He's with them, which means he's safe, and Valiant knows that without a doubt. It's the same way the Fours stick together. You have to look after your own first.

Which means now he needs to find Ivory.

That could be more difficult than finding anyone else.

Chances are she's already managed to get herself right in the middle of something that Valiant doesn't even have a shot at imagining; that's what he's used to. At least it's not coming as a shock, to find Ivory missing when someone's looking for her, probably involved in something she shouldn't be.

The Peacekeepers nearby are falling easy enough, if they're not running. The ones that are staying don't seem too keen to start gunning down the victors, not for people that don't actually have any overall control of the country. It's who's among them that's worrying him, a figure that's most blurred over with smoke, dark in contrast to their white and gray uniforms.

He doesn't have to see her face to know. It's not like seeing her face would even help. Luca didn't have the privilege for pictures, just descriptions that could fit anyone, if you looked the right way.

But Valiant doesn't need anything more than a description, to know that the woman walking through the Peacekeepers coming from the building is someone he's supposed to kill. It's not just that she needs to die. It's that there are still people outside the building that need to get in, that have jobs to do. Valiant was always supposed to stay outside, to take care of things here.

The Peacekeepers are starting to spread out. There are three still around her. Dark hair, even darker eyes.

She's not looking at him.

He sees her raise the gun. He doesn't see who she's aiming for, and doesn't care.

The first Peacekeeper's helmet shatters under the first bullet he fires, and then the second one hits home, where the glass is no longer protecting his neck and face. He falls, and blood sprays all over the woman's front when he does. One of the others starts firing back at him and he shelters behind the last piece of debris that's left, before it's him and them, nothing between them.

There are bullets slamming, unrelenting, into the other side. One will break through eventually.

He swings out. He's not scared of what's going to happen to him.

He goes low this time, and his next bullet hits in the space between armor, at the top of the next Peacekeeper's thigh. He falls, screaming. No way he's dead, but it's easier, to have one less person aiming at him. He's not that far, now. There are still other bullets flying between them, from other people who are all missing their targets. He's headed right through the crossfire, hoping, praying—

He's within a foot. The Peacekeeper backs up. Maybe they really are unwilling to kill the victors. The woman's bullet scrapes over the top of his shoulder, but the pain feels very far away. She throws herself out of the way, and the bullet that comes out of his own gun misses her head by two inches as she goes skidding through the dirt. The Peacekeeper hasn't retreated fully, and Valiant knows that if he stops paying attention that'll be the second he decides to kill him for good, instead of avoiding it.

The woman aims another shot at him and then the gun clicks, empty, so he lunges for the Peacekeeper, grabbing his legs and taking them both to the ground. He pulls the trigger and the bullet sinks into the man's arm. Valiant doesn't want to kill him. He got involved in this to save himself, probably, his family. He never wanted any of this.

They're one and the same.

Valiant shoves him away and then shoots again. The bullet hits him in the shin, and his scream is a pitch higher than the first one that he hit as he drags himself away through the dirt.

He's already tired. He's too old for this, never wanted any of this, but if it was him or the people he had spent so long trying to protect, that wasn't much of a choice at all.

He turns back.

She was holding a different gun. Not spending too much time reloading another one, not giving him a second to breathe like he had hoped for. A different gun, one he hadn't seen. Smaller, hidden in the folds of her jacket, in a place that was so close he hadn't even noticed it. He thinks of all the years they spent training him at the Academy, to notice everything, to never stop looking until you were certain of every advantage they had.

It's been so long, since then.

She pulls the trigger.

Valiant's not sure where in his chest the bullet sinks in, because all that takes over is the pain.

He's two feet from the ground when he sees the woman turn, only vaguely, as Ivory slams into her.

The force of the hit hurts him, a bullet lodged in his chest, and neither of them fall. Her gun is lodged in-between their bodies, useless now that Ivory's on her. He knows what the fury's like, when it's made to rise, like all the force of a hurricane. Ivory has every right to be angry, but even anger isn't taking this woman down, anger from a victor with more kills under her belt than most.

Valiant forces himself over, onto his knees, and the pain nearly makes his vision white out. He can taste the blood in his mouth, his lungs fighting back against every breath he's forcing himself to take.

Someone's getting punched. Someone's yelling. He can hear everything, but see almost nothing. Just their shapes moving back and forth, trading blows, so blurry he can hardly tell who's who. He makes it to his knees, but no further. He can't lift his arms any further up, anyway. He grapples for her knees, and knows that if Ivory even saw him coming close to grabbing her she'd be running; he must come in contact with the right set of legs, because of that, so he throws all his weight behind it and pulls.

He hits the ground again, and he loses his grip on the woman's knees but not before she topples over and then lands half on top of him. It's not a second longer before Ivory follows, and then he really can't breathe. It's like someone's stuck a brand in him, a burning hot iron. Everything's on fire around him but it's not any better on the inside either.

Ivory's not doing it on purpose. He knows that.

They both go rolling off him together, and he tries to follow, but can hardly move. It feels like he's been paralyzed. His fingers only just manage to graze the edges of her jacket, struggling to find purchase where there is none.

They're too far for him now, and he can't roll over on his side to see what's happening.

Someone screams, again. He's not sure if it's one of them or someone much further off.

He feels the blood spray all over the ground, the edges of it splattering across his cheek. His own breathing is very faint but he can hear the wet, ugly gurgle of someone struggling to breath through all the blood, the signs of a throat that's no longer intact.

Two seconds later, Ivory grabs him by the shoulders.

He tries to turn his head, tries to see what _happened_ , but Ivory forces his head back, trying to keep him still. Her hands are alarmingly bloody. Honestly, that's probably a good thing.

"Dimara," he forces out. There's definitely blood in his mouth. "You need to— you need to find her. You need to help her."

Ivory's not good in life or death situations unless she's the one handing out the death. When someone's dying in front of her, when she's looking at the aftermath of something she didn't participate in, that's when things go sour. She doesn't know what to do here. She wants to run, he can tell, but ducks closer as the gunfire starts up again.

"Go," he insists. He's not going to last much longer anyway. "Please go."

She's in danger the longer she's out here. If this is the last thing he's going to do, and it feels like it is, then he wants to make sure she's on her way to safety. He wants that to be the thing he remembers, when he finally lets himself go. They already lost Royal, and Tilve's nowhere in sight. Two's already in pieces.

He won't let One turn into that too.

"Go," he repeats. It hurts to speak. Her hands are gentler on the sides of his face than he thinks they've ever been. He remembers training her and feeling like a parent with a rebellious, out-spoken child. He thought she'd volunteer and get herself killed, with the mouth she had on her.

He's very glad he was wrong.

She swallows, and then nods. He doesn't watch her grab the gun that he dropped because his eyes are already so fogged over, but he feels her let go and stand back up. It feels like there's too much smoke in his eyes, and that any second someone will come running through and it will dissipate. It feels like safety is just on the other side, and he hopes for her sake that it is.

The last thing he sees is her running off.

It's very easy, to close his eyes.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

Every corner we turn I keep expecting something terrible to happen.

The noise from outside is still awful, the sounds of things burning and falling apart hard to ignore, even as we're running. I'm not trained to ignore the rest of the chaos like everyone else really is. It's all I can focus on, those noises and all the people that could still be out there. Vance, and Kellen, and I'm sure if Valiant hadn't been so determined to go back out there on his own that I would have been following him.

Safety only really feels like it when everyone else that needs to be safe is too.

There's not a chance in hell that Dimara's going to let me go, though.

I get it. I'm not going to fight her on it. At this point her hand around my wrist is probably one of the only things that's keeping me from imagining myself somewhere else entirely, or pretending that this is just some awful dream.

It's definitely not.

It doesn't help that this place feels like a ghost town, despite all the noise outside. For all we know this building _is_ empty - there are half a dozen others to comb through as well, and the Sentinels hiding in them are probably doing a pretty damn good job at it, too. It's the thought that something's waiting for us that's terrifying. We're trying to be as quiet as we can, doing an alright job at it so far, but that doesn't really mean anything. They know we're here. They were waiting to ambush us this whole time.

That means that the idea of someone waiting for us downstairs, just outside the control room, isn't so much of an idea as it is a certainty.

The second we're down the stairs and enclosed in the middle of a badly lighted hallway, it feels like we've gone somewhere that we shouldn't have.

Don't have a choice now.

This is all riding on us. We're following Audrel down right now to get to the cameras, so that she can see what needs to be seen. More importantly is the nearly non-existent weight of the earpiece off the shell of my ear. We need this to communicate, to talk to each other when we need it most. That's even more important than the cameras are.

We need to be able to protect each other.

There's no one down here. No hints of footsteps around the next corner, or a shadow out of place, leaning out of a nearby doorway. There should be someone down here. I wonder if this is how the guard felt going into the Presidential mansion, wondering where everyone had gone and where they could be, if they weren't here. Hiding still, no doubt. Waiting for us to fall for something again.

"That's it," Audrel murmurs, and points at a doorway right at the end of the hall. Maybe they're inside, then. There's no one guarding outside the doors, which I feel like would be the more obvious, appropriate option, but I guess they're neither of those things. I don't know why I'm surprised.

Linnet creeps up to the door and stops. Listens. I almost don't know why she's bothering. If they don't want to be heard, they won't be. Orick still sidles up against the opposite door, waiting.

One of them pushes the door open. I don't see who, because I shut my eyes at the obnoxious creak the door lets out, as it gives and goes sliding inwards.

Nothing happens.

I haven't even fully opened my eyes again by the time Dimara's pulling me down the hall, so fast that I nearly trip over my own two feet. Orick pushes Audrel through the doors and then ushers the two of us after her, and the second we're all inside they shut the doors tight behind us.

There's no one in here.

"Someone should've been here," Audrel says. Her voice is very calm, for this entire situation.

"You think that's weird, that no one is?"

"Everything they do is weird," she mutters, and then stops to take it all in. The room itself isn't very big, but every inch of available wall space is covered by a screen or monitor. Most of them are on, save for a few in the corner, bringing forth displays of what must be all the cameras, at least in this building. It looks like there are several broadcasting other areas too.

"What do you want us to do?" Orick asks.

"Shut up for a second."

Not like I was going to talk in the first place.

"I'm gonna go back upstairs," Dimara murmurs, and I look up at her.

"You shouldn't go alone."

"Don't have a choice. You guys need to stay here. Valiant won't have gotten far, and he was supposed to be with us anyway. I'll find him, don't worry."

Of course I'm going to worry. No one's supposed to be left alone in the middle of all this, least of all us. Being alone is too dangerous.

I don't have a choice, though, but to let Dimara slip back out the doors. She can handle herself, probably better than almost anyone. That still doesn't change the fact that the people in here knows she's coming, and they could be anywhere. It doesn't help that I'm stuck in this room because I just want to make her life easier, for the time being. It doesn't mean I want to be.

"Okay," Audrel says, and then points at the black screens. "Get those on for me, and turn on some more lights. I'm gonna connect all of our comms to the main power source in here, it should make the signal strong enough that we can hear each other no matter where we go."

"And how long will that take?"

"Not that long. Ten, fifteen minutes tops. Might take a few extra minutes for everyone to connect through, though."

Audrel says fifteen minutes like she means ten seconds. I hear fifteen minutes like she said two hours. Linnet heads for the lights along the wall and Orick seems focused on getting the remaining screens up and running, which leaves me to just stand here. That's about as much as I thought I'd be doing. I'm no use here, and everyone knows it. But it means I'm safe, relatively speaking. For now anyway.

Unoccupied, I find myself staring at the screens. There was one at the top of the stairs, not all that far from where we came in, and that's the one that Dimara passes by now, so quickly I almost don't see her, with so many different monitors to look at. She's moving fast, at least, headed with purpose back to the window, and it makes me feel a bit better.

At least, it does. For a few seconds.

I almost don't see the figure pass by a camera, next to the screen I was looking at. It's so quick it seems like nothing more than a shadow, and for a second I'm brought back to the arena, constantly wondering if what I'm seeing was real, or a trick.

This is real.

"Who was that?" I ask, and Audrel's head snaps up. The person on the screen disappears as fast as they appeared, but two seconds later they're back, this time on a different screen. The same one that Dimara had been on just a minute before. She looks as if she knows exactly where she's going, and from this angle it's all too easy to see all the weapons she's got on her, practically laden with them, but she doesn't act as if she's weighed down by them at all.

In fact, I think they're making her move faster.

And Dimara may be moving with purpose, but she's still trying to be cautious. Not moving nearly as fast as this girl is, anyway, who seems to know exactly where she's headed and what will be there when she arrives.

She's going after Dimara.

The comms aren't up yet. They won't be up, before those two meet. There's no way to warn her.

Well, there is.

"She's going to hate me," I get out, and pull the door back open. Orick nearly grabs me by the coat and yanks me back into the room, but clearly thinks better of it. They can stay here. That's fine with me. I'll go up there alone, I'll go after the two of them alone. What's down here really matters, there's no doubt about that, and Linnet and Orick know it's the most important thing to them at the moment.

I know what's most important to me.

And it's not down here.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

Blair must have gotten Nadir out.

At least that's what I keep telling myself, as I open a nearly rusted over side door to the building and edge inside.

I'm in a stairwell, and even though it leads deeper into the ground I'm not too keen on intentionally burying myself alive. The prospect of going up isn't much better, not when I know the roof can't be that far off, and the sniper is still up there, but I've got to pick a direction. I've got to find someone.

It just depends if the first person I find is going to be good or bad. We all know our luck thus far hasn't exactly been _stellar_ ; I see no reason why it's going to change now. I just know that despite my better judgement I can't sit here and wait for someone to come and pick me up, give me a purpose. I can't even remember who our target was supposed to be. Everything we discussed yesterday and in the car today might as well be a complete blur. It's all very far away now.

The second the door is shut I have no way of knowing what's going on outside. There are a few windows several floors up, but I almost don't want to see.

I'm alone, I don't know where exactly I'm supposed to go, and there's no way of fixing either of those problems.

I need to think about myself, not about what's happening outside.

All of that is far out of my control.

I poke my head out into the hallway but quickly duck back into the stairwell. Everyone running for the building is going to wind up on the ground floor, save for a select few that decide to go further into the complex, or manage their way into a stairwell like I did.

I take my time headed to the next floor up. The hallway looks completely different from the one below it. Brighter, all the curtains drawn open. The marble floors and pillars look like nothing has touched or seen them in years, but we all know how untrue that is. This place is too nice to be housing a bunch of monsters, to be concealing them around any corner someone turns.

One knife, one gun, as I take a wary step out into the hall. I don't really think there's a point to taking the hatchet out. They'll either be too far away to properly hit or so close that I won't have time to get it up between us. Either way I end up dead, encumbered by a weapon that I always thought would be the thing that saved me at the end of the day.

The earpiece crackles, and I wince. Still silent, thus far, but maybe that means it's close. Maybe that means in a few minutes I'll be able to hear something other than my own footsteps, and someone will finally be able to come up and meet me. That, or I go back down. Either one will work for me, so long as I have someone watching my back. I shouldn't have even agreed to leave Nadir and Blair in the first place, nor should I have gotten to the building alone. What in the world was I thinking, with how on edge I am now?

The hallway opens up at the end, revealing where the main staircase comes up and out. There are rooms in every direction, half the doors closed. The ones that are open only serve to heighten my nerves, about what could be hiding in there even though I can't fully see.

It feels like someone's looking at me, but I have no way to know that.

I expect someone to be waiting on the stairs, too, but they're thankfully empty. What I do notice are the irregularities along the walls. One, about two feet away, halfway up. There's another closer to the middle of the stairs, one on either side, nearly concealed by the railings. Small little bundles, stuck to the walls, and I back up.

The bombs coming out of the jet weren't the only explosives they had.

It's not obvious, like a neon red stick of dynamite, but it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that they're meant for detonation. Wires that are barely sticking out, like someone was almost in a rush to put them together.

I stick to the middle of the stairs, even though I feel like I'm too much in the open. It's better than being near one of those as it detonates, even though I don't know how it would. Is someone far away, controlling the charges? Are they just set to go off at random times, or when someone gets too close to them? In that case, I'd probably be dead already.

They don't end there. There's more on the wall at the corner around the bottom of the stairs.

If these were set off, they'd collapse the entire staircase. A very large portion of the floor above it. It could kill so many people, if they time it right. And they've already killed more than what we planned. I don't doubt that this isn't the only area that's rigged up either. There are half a dozen huge, sprawling buildings for them to fill. They just knew this one would be the first we got to. It's probably set up even better than the rest.

I won't touch them to find out, either. All I can do is warn them.

"Nice find, kid."

It's a good thing I had just gotten off the stairs. I turn around so fast my feet slip on the marble floor and struggle for purchase. The gun nearly goes flying, but I manage to hold on.

Someone's standing at the top of the stairs. Not anyone I recognize. I can't help but wonder how long she's been standing there watching me, waiting for me to finish my descent, or waiting for me to notice. The thought that she could've just shot me in the back, in the head, it hits me with a dizzying amount of force. That's probably what I would have done, had I been at the top and she the bottom.

And that's clearly why we're two very, very different people.

The earpiece goes all static again, and I freeze. This time a voice comes through, broken and hardly audible, but I take one last, huge deep breath.

"Guys," I say quietly. I can't tell if someone is responding, or if someone even heard me.

She pulls the gun off her back. I take off.

I won't be able to outrun her for that long. She's going to gun me down the second she gets a good shot. I just need to outpace her, just need to keep a good pace until someone can intervene, because there's no way I'm killing her on my own. I swing around the next corner, and she comes very leisurely down the stairs. It would be annoying, if I wasn't freaking out.

"—Tanis?"

"I'm gonna need some help," I manage. "Second floor."

I need to find the stairs. I _need_ to find the stairs. Why did I think heading up, away from everyone I knew would help me, was ever a good idea? Someone down there will help me. Someone down there will be able to intervene, to save my life.

A bullet hits the wall and slams back off the marble just as I round the next corner.

I need to find the stairs.

And I need to find them fast.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

The second the comms go up, everyone starts talking so fast and so loud I don't even know what I'm supposed to focus on.

I nearly consider ripping it out of my ear before I hear Tanis' voice, clearly trying very hard not to sound panicked.

Of course it's that that sticks out the most, almost instantly. Almost everyone else is barking out orders, trying to figure out where other people have gone. Trying to figure out who's alive, but I can't think about that for more than a few seconds before my own panic threatens to bubble up, and that's about the last thing I'm in the mood for right now.

Mia grabbed me, the second I got separated from Kelsea and Dimara, and that's about the only certainty I've had thus far.

There's no telling why Mia makes me feel safe. She shouldn't, with her track record. It's probably more Kiero, because at the end of the day I don't think Aveza's any better than Mia is. It's a wonder Kiero hasn't gone insane the past few years, trying to deal with the both of them. With Kelsea and Dimara long gone and no clear direction otherwise, we need to pick something to do. Someone to go after. Anything, really, as long as it gives me a purpose.

"Let us go for her," someone says. I'm not sure who. "We have a car, it's good to go, we'll get there the fastest."

"Do not go running off right now," Mia snaps. "I don't need you missing too. Let Deverin get her. Mentors can take care of their tributes, believe me."

I don't have to believe her. I've lived that.

"Vance? You're okay?" It's very clearly Kelsea's voice that's coming through now, labored, like she's running. It's a miracle I even hear her through anything else, trying not to trip over my own two feet as Mia pushes me around a corner and through the nearest doorway.

"I'm good. You're still with Dimara?"

"Not - not exactly. I'm headed her way right now, she's not answering."

She's not answering; because she's not connected to us yet, or because of some other reason? God, I don't even want to think about the possibility of there being another reason, but I know there could be. I had watched Mia out there, just barely. Watched her catch sight of a body that I didn't even recognize, half charred from the fire, but she had recognized it, and then Kiero and Aveza, more slowly. It's something that I had looked away from because I was unwilling to confront the reality that people were dying, people I should've known. People I _would_ have known, had things not gone so terribly wrong.

"Kels, you need to be careful—"

"I know, I know," she insists wildly. "Just make sure everyone else is okay."

"And would someone take care of that fucking sniper?" someone else asks. "He's gone from the roof, mostly everyone's inside now. Someone needs to find him before he sets up somewhere else."

"Sounds like a party," Mia responds. "Let's go."

Perfect. Just what I was missing from my day; going toe to toe with a sniper who's already shown he's more than willing to open fire on a halfway innocent crowd of human beings.

"We need to find Kelsea and Dimara too," I insist, unwilling to leave them alone. They obviously got down to the control room just fine, and Dimara must have left, but if Kelsea's going after her now then something is seriously wrong. No matter if she can handle herself or not, I've watched people just as capable as her die already today, and I don't want her testing her luck.

I don't think any of us do.

"Two birds with one stone," Kiero says. "They went to the right of the first building, that's where he was close to anyway."

I don't think Kiero wants to go find a sniper anymore than I do, even though Aveza looks like she's ready to kill the guy with nothing but her bare hands. Something she's clearly much more eager, and better at, than I am.

That fear for the others is still present in the back of my mind. I can still hear more, only vaguely familiar voices, but nothing from anyone else. No sign of Celia, Rory, or Rooke, who were all supposed to be together. Blair and Nadir could be who knows where. And Dimara, who is seemingly already in danger, is radio silent. It's taking too long for all of this to fall into place, at the moment we need it to be quicker than ever.

"You want to get out of that head of yours?" Mia asks me. "Take the gun out and let's go kill the bastard."

Easier said than done, and she makes it sound very easy.

I wish I had that level of confidence.

"Kelsea, we're headed to you," I tell her. "Don't do anything stupid."

"Might be too late for that?"

"Don't say that."

I don't want to look for the sniper, and it's not just because of how dangerous that plan in. I'd rather get directions and look for Kelsea, and then find Dimara, and know without a doubt that the both of them are safe. From there we can find everyone else. I don't care about killing them. That doesn't matter if we lose everyone else anyway. The Sentinels on our side won't survive with no one to back them up. It'll be like we were never here at all.

Prometheus may be able to light the world, but even they can't save it alone.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

I don't see where Blair goes, nor do I ever see if he finds Seren or not.

The second the sniper takes a break Kane shoves me forward, grabs Meritt by the collar of his jacket to stop him from running in the opposite direction, and then herds both of us right up against the side of the building.

There's only so many bullets Kane can waste before it becomes pointless. Three's dead, and there's less bullets coming from the roof. The jet is also circling lower, too, like it'a almost ready to come down. That's another body to deal with, possibly more than one. There's no way to know. I can't even concentrate, over all the static in my ear. It's trying desperately to get through, but it's not happening just yet.

"This plan is absolutely fucked," Meritt says under his breath, and I hear him but I don't think Kane does, which is why Meritt skirts around him in two seconds flat and then takes off.

So there's the static, the things on fire, Kane yelling after Meritt, and all the noise in my own head to think about.

It's a lot.

The jet interrupts all of that, the wind growing stronger the closer it gets to the ground. It's edging closer to the buildings; and closer and it will crash right into them.

"Do you think it's landing?" I ask. Kane had been leaning around the building, clearly trying to catch a glimpse of wherever Meritt had gone, but now he turns to look back at me. It's a likely option. Whoever it is won't bomb the building, not when there's too many people inside that they don't want to kill, accidentally or not. Chances are they'll get out and start fighting themselves.

He wants to go after Meritt. I can see it all over his face.

But he won't.

He smashes one of the few remaining windows at the side of the building open and I clamber through, not even having to be urged. Not that the building's any better, with how many people I've seen already get inside.

"Audrel, stairs," Kane says, as soon as he's inside after me. "We're going up. And keep an eye out for Meritt."

Whatever is said in response, clearly he hears it much better than I do. All I hear are a list of garbled instructions, every other word cut off and nearly massacred into something that doesn't even make sense. He grabs my arm with a very distinct sense of purpose and starts pulling me off down the hallway. We pass one door, and then a second, but the third one he finally opens and pulls me through, before he slams it shut behind us.

Right. Stairs.

The whole building shakes when we're not even halfway up. Even though we can't see it it's unmistakable, the sound of the jet as it touches down on the roof.

Kane slams the access door open and doesn't even hesitate before he's got the gun up, aimed at the jet that's clear across the roof. Someone's already out, and the second the bullets start flying she disappears around the other side of it, and I can't tell where she goes. There's still someone piloting it, though. The glass isn't hiding them at all - both of us can see him clear as day.

I was really hoping I could avoid the guns, but what is a knife going to do, against a jet?

I see the girl leap across the gap between two buildings, and then she rounds the corner to what is presumably the other door. The engines of the jet start up again, and the wind starts buffeting again.

Just dropping off a passenger, casual as can be. Ready to be back in the sky.

I pull out the gun and start shooting.

I can't even tell what I'm hitting. No doubt Kane's bullets are finding a home ten times easier than mine are. The glass all along the front of the jet is starting to crack, but we both watch as it picks back up off the roof, just a few inches. In less than a minute he'll be gone.

Less than five feet off the roof, the glass finally breaks.

It could have been a bullet from either of us, but it doesn't matter. _Something_ clearly happens, whatever it may be. The jet swerves, tilting at an awkward angle as it tries to rise from the roof, and the left wing clips the edge of the building as it tilts downward. There's not very far for it to go. Bits of the wing are torn off as it tips right off the roof and into the courtyard below. It can hardly even fit, but it still hits the ground with a tremendous boom, and the wing gets half ripped off before it lays still, smoke pouring from one side of it.

There's no way to tell if we killed the man inside.

"I can't see him from here," Kane says. The cockpit's facing the opposite way, but there's a ladder leading down from the other building, all the way down to the ground.

"If I go down there—"

"You don't know that he's dead."

"I know, but if I climb down, and you come with me to the other roof, you'll be able to see him, right? In case he's not."

I've got a gun, too, not acting any differently about it. I'm not expecting Kane to kill him, if I go down there. That's just a back-up plan, an _in case_.

He nods. I take a deep breath and head for the other roof.

He never puts the gun away, but he still grabs my arm while I lower myself over the edge of the roof and down onto the ladder. It's not that far of a drop. Far enough that I would hurt myself, tremendously, but it feels higher than it is. There's no movement from behind the ripped open glass.

Not until I hit the ground, anyway.

Kane's already lowered himself down, gun at the ready, and the jet's hatch pops open. What's left of the windshield and the metal exterior slowly swings outward, and a hand is gripping at the edge of it. He's not dead. At this point, it's not even surprising.

He's also not armed. Or if he is, he's certainly not showing it. There's a healthy amount of blood all over his face, and the glass must have contributed to it but he's bleeding from the head, and it's all over his face, coating everything he even swerves towards. The bullet missed the center of his head, just barely, but it definitely hit. Enough for him to lose control, a deep enough graze that the jet went haywire, without someone to control it.

He nearly falls when he manages to get out, clutching at his head and back at the jet with the other hand.

I don't know what I expected. For him to be older, I guess. He's no older than Kane, if that. Just another kid who wanted nothing to do with what he was forced into. The world makes monsters of kids in every form, in every area of life. Even beyond the fences.

He looks at me. At the gun in my hand, pointed directly at him.

I expect him to care, too. But he clearly doesn't.

"You really," he starts, trying to regain his breath. "You really think any of us are afraid to die?"

We may all be kids in a situation we shouldn't be in, but there's a fundamental difference. That much is clear. The static bursts through in my ear again, too many voice filtering through after it. None of us want to die. We're all running away from it, as fast as we can.

But he isn't.

"We've been dead for _years_ ," he tells me. "Why not go out with a—"

There is no voice in my head telling me to pull the trigger, but it happens anyway.

It hardly seems like it was my fingers, that closed around the trigger. The next thing I know there's a bullet in his chest and he stumbles back up against the jet, a bright spot of blood blooming outwards from his right side, the smallest, hardly noticeable wisp of smoke coming from the end of the gun. It almost felt like it was Kane that fired the bullet, not me, but if it had been that there would have been some element of surprise. Shock.

I stay there until he sags to the ground, legs splayed out awkwardly underneath him in the dirt. He's already very limp, but for a second my feet feel completely rooted to the ground.

That's one more down.

I thought I would feel bad, until I heard those words come out of his mouth. The lack of life in him coupled with the fact that they only ever just wanted one last moment, and then all empathy went out the window. That's reserved for people like Cade, for all the people back at the entrance to the buildings who won't ever get back up.

This isn't about controlling the country, or starting all out civil war. It was never about them, or us.

It was just about going out with a bang.

"Pilot's down," I say, and whoever was still talking to in the earpiece goes silent.

Just because I no longer feel bad, doesn't mean I want to look at it any longer.

I turn back and head for the ladder.

* * *

Also, welcome to the 50's.

I promise I won't be saying anything like that again.

Until next time.


	52. Worst Case Scenario

District Two; Esterwick Government Complex, western quadrant.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

I couldn't have to make any more terrible decisions right about now.

But I have to leave Rory, because Rooke's apparently decided that now is the prime opportunity to just vanish into thin air. It feels like I ought to glue the two of them together. It feels like I'm _Dimara_.

At least I know where Rory is, though, and I'm convinced that he's safe with Ronan and Deverin. If only Theo and Costa hadn't run off not a second before I did, in another direction. Still Peacekeepers to deal with, I know, but I couldn't care less about any Peacekeepers right now.

And to think I thought I could handle wrangling the two of them. At least the scythe appears to be missing too. At least he's armed.

That would be more of a comfort to me if I thought anything good was going to come of him being armed.

It doesn't help that I'm not two minutes gone when Tanis starts up in a carefully controlled panic, and of course Deverin offers to go get her, and of course I'm nowhere near them.

"Celia—"

"Go, go," I tell Rory. "I'm gonna find him, we'll catch up."

When Rory panics he goes silent, and there's no voice on the other end now. There's no good direction to head in right now. Either he leaves them and chances coming back for me to look for Rooke, or he goes with them and hopes that they can get to Tanis before anyone else does. Judging by how frantic she was, something bad is about to happen. Rory probably doesn't want to see either side.

But it's not like he really has a choice, right now.

"Go," I repeat. "I'm serious. I'm fine."

"Okay," he replies. "Don't go far. If you haven't found him by the time we're done, then we'll come and get you. We'll look for him together."

Easier said than done. They've already taken the car around the far side of the building, headed towards where Tanis supposedly is. I'm still out in the front. It's a lot easier, not that the sniper's disappeared.

I'm standing there when I see the jet go spiraling off the roof, not long after it lands. I see one person go peeling away from it a second before they disappear into the building, and I'm unable to get a shot off before they do. Whatever Nadir and Kane do, they do it well. It doesn't take long for her voice to come through the comms, telling us he's dead.

It's a relief. But that doesn't mean it's over. In fact, it's far from that.

Unless Rooke didn't think it was safe to find us and took off for one of the buildings, then he's still out here. I don't know which one's more likely, and he's not answering anyone's calls, no matter who asks after him, no matter who worries. He probably got caught up in the explosion same as the rest of us. We were supposed to take care of him. For the first time he was actually supposed to be around with the thought that someone was actually going to care enough about him to stick by his side permanently, and look how that's gone.

It makes me feel like shit. I really can't afford to feel like that right now.

I refuse to believe he's dead. I look through the few people still left out in the front courtyard. At the bodies, some beyond recognition. There's Peacekeeper's lying everywhere. It's almost a relief that I can't recognize anyone, because I'm not sure what I would do if that happened.

Theo and Costa are two people that I can see, now that I've moved a little bit more into the wreckage of some of the cars. They're pretty far off, already, standing over the body of someone I'm not going to allow myself to look at.

There's so many of them, all over place.

"Anything?" Rory asks.

"No," I say, almost infuriated by the word alone. How could this have gone so wrong? Where could he have ended up?

There's a body half lying under a piece of debris, the legs charred and burnt. I force myself to flip the blackened piece of metal off them, my breath catching in my throat at the sight of the blonde hair. It's not him. I can't even really make out a face, but I know it's not him. That still means that it's someone, though, one of the victors, and I take a pace back before I can really get a good look at their face.

It's not Rooke, but it's not solving anything either.

"Theo!" I shout, and thankfully he turns around, Costa not far behind him. The few other people left in the vicinity turn now, jumping nearly a mile. Everyone's scared worse than they thought they would be, even if the dust is starting to settle out here. Everyone knows that it's still kicking off inside, and not one of them looks particularly eager to join.

Theo jogs up to my side, quickly sliding to a halt when he sees the body not far from my feet. It doesn't take him long, to be the one to crouch down on the ground, getting a better look. Costa grabs my arm, fingers a little too tight when Theo gently rolls the body a little bit more to the side.

"Lumin," he says. It's a miracle his voice is as steady as it is. "Go find Tessa."

Costa nods, and lets go of my arm, even if it seems reluctant. Because Five needs more destruction, when they already have so little in the first place, right?

Theo stays on the ground for a moment before he stands back up next to me. Costa's already gone. I don't know whether or not I hope she succeeds in finding Tessa or not. A victor of only two years deserves this about as much as we do. She's the same age as us. It's too much.

"Who else did you find?"

"Albany and Barron." He swallows, and looks around again. "Valiant too. And Emori was with Dyna, when she—"

"I got it," I manage. "But no sign of Rooke."

He wouldn't lie to me, if that really was the case. If they had found him. There'd be no point to lying right now. If anything, this will fuel us even when it shouldn't. That's five people, to fire or to bullets or to a jet that we didn't see coming. Five people that can't have died for nothing.

"You're gonna find him," Theo says. "Don't think worst case scenario. Not yet."

I thought worst case scenario once, when the nine of us were all trapped in that building, staring death in the face. I thought, maybe, that I could survive it, but I wasn't daring to be that optimistic. Not when I knew everything around me was about to fall apart. But that was just me, and thinking about my own death, and wondering what it was going to be. This is about everyone.

So for them, I can't think that.

Not yet.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

I'm made aware of several things, pretty much all at the same time.

It would be helpful, extremely so, if I could hear anything at all, other than the sound of my own footsteps and my heartbeat, moving in turn. There's no sign of Valiant, not even when I poke my head out the window and look around for a few seconds. Going back downstairs doesn't feel right, either. They're safe down there, for the time being. They don't need me, and I wouldn't be useful anyway.

Valiant's nowhere in sight, so I move on.

And when I move on, I start hearing something, just in-between my own footsteps.

It sounds like someone walking, mixed with the sounds of metal grating against metal, heavy objects moving against each other. I freeze for a second, wondering just how many things I could be hearing.

But it's close. Closer than it should be.

I stop at the next corner and pause against the wall. I hadn't planned on going this way, but you never know. I had been thinking about heading to the front of the building, where some people might still be congregating. That's probably not where this hall will take me, but if it's safe, I can handle that.

I can almost hear something in the earpiece, so Audrel must have gotten through finally. I tap a finger against it a few times but that only makes the static burst through louder. Better to wait.

Or is it?

Those are definitely footsteps, coming closer to me by the second. If it was someone familiar, they wouldn't be trying to creep up on me like this. I wouldn't be worried, either. What are the chances, of this being good, when approximately nothing else has been thus far? Not very likely, if I'm being honest with myself in this moment. I wish I was better at lying to myself.

I hear something almost like my name through the earpiece, slightly warped, and I edge further down the hall and press myself against the nearest doorway. It'll hide me for maybe an extra second or two, if someone is really determined to come looking for me.

"Dimara!"

That didn't come from the earpiece.

That came from around the corner.

I step back out of the doorway at the worst possible time. That's _not_ anyone I recognize, a girl who has a gun pointed directly my way. It would look a lot less threatening if it wasn't. Kelsea comes skidding around the corner behind the girl not two seconds later, eyes wide. Clearly it was her that yelled, something very frantic, and at least now I get it.

Of course, I wish I didn't have to. But this is just one more example of terrible timing in a situation that's basically filled with them.

All three of us are unmoving. The girl raises the gun, far above my head, and two seconds later there's a bullet shattering the front of the camera just down the hallway, up above in the corner. The first time she pulls the trigger it clicks, almost like it's empty. The bullet doesn't come free until the second time, and I stare, but her finger doesn't falter.

Well, now no one can see us. That's nice. The static in my ears is very slowly starting to turn into actual words, but not fast enough. Kelsea is staring at me, silent, unwilling to say anything other than my name. Clearly the girl didn't know she was being followed, but Kelsea wouldn't have made any noise in the first place. Now it's just about what happens next.

I don't really have any time to come up with a plan.

I take the smallest step forward and her gun resettles, pointed right back at me.

"You wanna test your luck?" she says. Her finger hovers over the trigger again, and the second it comes down I flinch.

Nothing happens. Kelsea starts, when she realizes I don't yet have a hole in me.

The chamber rotates, old-fashioned revolver. I can't make out the details from here, but that's the second time. It clicked, empty, the first time too, before the shot came out. Randomly placed bullets, any second the one when one finally comes out. Good old russian roulette, with more bullets than usual. It means that I might have more time than usual, but I won't know when it's coming.

None of us will.

"Dimara?" Ivory says in my ear, and I let out a breath. "Where are you?"

"Can't really talk right now," I murmur.

"Tell me where you are."

I don't know if Kelsea can hear her, or if that's just me.

"First floor, east corridor," I say. It's loud enough that the gun clicks again. I force myself to stay still, to calm my breathing. She doesn't want me talking - that much is clear. It's just about how much I can get out before one of the chambers is finally filled with something other than air.

"Stay put."

"What do I do?"

"Don't die."

I can't tell if the girl's gotten closer or not, or if that's just my imagination. Something very far away shakes and rumbles, the sound of an explosion. _Bomber's in the building_ , someone says, but it's not Ivory, so I all but ignore them. The jet's down, but apparently not everyone inside it went with it. The girl's got one eye on me and the other on Kelsea, but it's clear that she knows I'm the real problem.

"Are you at the last corner, or further down?" Ivory asks.

I chance a glance over my shoulder, just barely moving. "Fifteen feet. Ish."

"It's a marvel that you're not that scared," the girl says. "Prometheus got to you guys more than I expected."

I should've known, when she said that. Somehow I'm still unprepared when she turns the gun away from me and swings it back towards Kelsea.

So I don't really think. I just move. Ivory's words are completely forgotten in the moment, when I lunge to close the distance between the two of us. At the last second she turns the gun back towards me, and this time I actually hear the bullet come free from the chamber. I don't really feel it impact with my arm, just below the elbow. There's a very brief flare of fiery pain, as it rips through my skin before it bursts free from the other side. I don't even have a weapon out. There's not a damn second for that to happen.

There's an explosion, right above us. I crash into the girl's back.

I also should have expected that she wouldn't go down just from that hit alone. She's not a scrawny, underfed tribute that I'm trying to take down. She's a lot worse. All it does is screw with her aim a bit, sufficiently distracting her from shooting Kelsea for the time being. She turns around to wrestle my arms away from her torso, still holding onto that stupid gun. She wrenches my arm back, tearing the skin under my elbow apart even more. More blood drips down onto the floor.

The last thing I expect is for Kelsea to get actively involved.

The second I feel one of her arms on me, I nearly scream. To think all I was trying to do was distract this girl from hitting Kelsea, and now she's right in the thick of it anyway. Curse us, probably, for making her think she needs to do that, when she's half everyone's size.

She's not trying to force the girl off me, though. She's trying to pull me back, as hard as she can, so I go with it. I push off her too, digging up against her abdomen, and with Kelsea pulling me both of us go tumbling to the floor.

It's not until I hit the ground that I realize the ceiling is cracking apart. Something Kelsea already saw.

The girl realizes at the exact same time, and takes off the opposite way.

Several chunks of the ceiling come hurtling down and hit the floor mere feet away, where the two of us had just been fighting. The girl manages to clear the space before the rest of it breaks apart, a pile of rubble slowly growing on the floor as it crumbles away right in front of me. Kelsea instantly starts trying to squirm away, and I wrench my own gun out of my belt before she can even get there. I can hardly see through all the dust that's accumulating, but I can still see the girl, about to turn back towards us.

She doesn't get the chance, before I fire.

It's bad, that I'm pretty sure of. She hits the ground but I see where the bullet itself hits, somewhere in her side. Right up against her ribs. No empty chambers to be seen here, thank you very much.

"She's not dead," Kelsea manages, and I'm already clambering to my feet. More blood drips down from my hand, but the pain's hardly registering as I make my way through the chaos that is now the floor, struggling to get to the other side of it. Kelsea doesn't let go of my jacket the entire time, following along as closely as she can.

The girl indeed isn't dead. She's still got her eyes open, searching us out, even through there's most definitely a bullet lodged somewhere in her ribs. There's already a trickle of blood running out of her mouth.

I don't know what she'd say, if I thought she was capable of speaking.

I don't really care, either.

The second she even moves, to do something she probably couldn't see through, I pull the trigger again. Kelsea flinches at the noise, so close, and then folds a hand over where the blood is still pumping out of my arm. It's not that bad. Not as bad as it could've been.

"Thanks," I get out, and Kelsea nods, squeezing tighter around my arm.

"Everything alright down there?" Ivory asks, standing far above on the second floor, staring down through the whole she created in the floor. Because setting off explosives right in the thick of things is always safe, right? Especially when you're doing it with the goal in mind to only have it truly affect one person, and not the one you're trying to protect.

"I'd appreciate some warning next time," I inform her.

"Warnings are for losers." Even as she says it, she looks slightly troubled. Maybe it's the blood, or maybe it's something else.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not so sure I want to hear it right now. All I can really think about is how that's one more down. One step closer, in the grand scheme of things. It's better than nothing.

A little blood is something I can handle, when it comes to that.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

I'm pretty sure she's gaining on me.

I'm trying not to think about it.

All I'm focusing on, for my own sanity, is whatever instructions Deverin is giving me.

 _Head for the doors._ Okay, got it, don't really know what way those are at this point, but I'll try. _Stay in the outside corridors._ Can do that, for sure, because even chancing fleeting glances out the window is giving me hope that I'll be able to get outside and get away from the witch that is chasing me. _If I tell you to stop, you need to trust me._ No offense, I don't really want to stop. No matter what amount of trust I have placed in Deverin, nothing in me is going to want to stop. The second I do, that could give her the option to shoot.

"What do you see now?" Rory asks. Right. Nearly forget he was with her, Ronan too. It's really hard to remember things like that, when you're completely focused on running for your life and trying not to fall.

"The hallway turns left at the end," I pant. "I think I'm getting closer to the doors. I can see smoke out the windows."

"Okay, when you turn the next corner, stop."

 _Stop._ That was the word I was dreading. To be honest, I was on the fast track to having convinced myself that Deverin was joking when she said someone would tell me to. It doesn't make any sense. Do they want me to wind up dead?

"Are you serious?" I ask. I'm getting closer to the corner. There's not much time to even really make a concrete decision.

"Tanis, trust us."

Easier said than done. But that's what I've been working so hard to do this whole time, isn't it? Trust people I never thought I want want to or have the opportunity to trust. Deverin's different, she's been my mentor from the start. But all of them are worlds away.

I round the next corner, and I stop.

My chest is heaving, my legs prickling with a fierce burn, and I lean against the wall. I didn't even realize how much it hurt until now. When I peek back around the corner I can't see the girl, not yet, but I reckon it'll only be a few seconds.

"I stopped. What do you want me to do?"

"Stay there."

I have to be able to do something else. If I just stand there, I'll be waiting for it. There's still this hallway that I could run down, or I could try my luck at the set of double doors across the hall in front of me. I don't know if they lead outside, but if they do, I might have a real shot at getting away.

"Guys—"

"Tanis, don't move."

A car comes crashing right through the doors.

I flinch and throw myself back against the wall even more, but the second the doors splinter apart and fall to the ground, the car stops, tires squealing against the marble. There's so much noise I don't even hear the girl round the corner after me, but even she looks a little bit surprised at what's transpired when she's been too slow to stop it.

That's Ronan in the driver's seat, and I can see Deverin, too, and Rory.

The girl lunges after me, but I'm already headed for the car. Ronan basically comes flying out of the front seat, gun raised, and I feel the bullets whiz over my shoulder, just past my head. It'd be terrifying, coming from anyone else. I nearly run into the driver's side door I'm going so fast, and I don't even take a second to look back. Deverin reaches over the middle console and leans out of the car to grab me, halting my momentum. I land very awkwardly, half laying in the driver's seat, but it takes her all of two seconds to drag me further in and then send me flying into the backseat, awkwardly crushed in the footwell. I half expect Rory to pull me back up, but he's already out of the car and after Ronan, arrows flying.

Even from my awkward position I can see Deverin clambering to get in the driver's seat, already holding onto the wheel, and by the time I pull myself back up onto the seat the car is already jumping forward. Both of the doors shut of their own accord.

The girl's bleeding, but so is Ronan. Neither look terribly injured. The second the noise of the car starts back up everyone's scrambling to move out of it's impending path. There's not much room for it to move.

A bullet hits the girl in the shoulder. One just misses Ronan's head.

Someone must get the message. Rory dives out of the way, scrambling back behind the car, and Ronan flattens himself against the wall. The noise of Deverin flattening her foot against the gas pedal is deafening.

I don't really look.

But I definitely feel it.

There's a very harsh thump, and a half cut-off scream before the car goes rolling _over_ something. I know exactly what it just ran over, _who._ Deverin keeps going until the car is finally clear, nearly into the next hallway. Both Rory and Ronan make a face at whatever they see behind the car's path. Whatever's left, anyway. She hit her fast, and hard, and I don't even want to imagine what the wreckage of that looks like.

"All good?" Deverin asks. "Or do I need to back up?"

Ronan doesn't look amused, exactly, but it's not far off. "I'd say you did a pretty sufficient job of running her over the first time, Dev."

I finally let myself take a deep breath. It feels like I haven't breathed properly in a while. Rory opens the door just next to me once again, leaning in.

"You good?"

"Yeah. Cutting it a little close."

He reaches forward to squeeze my leg. "We're gonna go look for the others. Stay here with Deverin, until you're good."

"I should go find Nadir."

"You will. Just take a minute first."

Right, think about myself first, just for a moment. I'll be dead if I have to try running full speed away from anyone any time soon. Rory holds me there until he's apparently satisfied that I'm not going to come tumbling out of the car after him to try something else. I can't help but notice how divided his attention is - clearly he's trying to pay attention to me, but there's so much more to think about.

"Go," I tell him. "I'm good. Thanks."

He nods, and goes to follow Ronan, who's already started to move down the hallway. I chance a glance behind me. The body behind the car is still recognizable, to a degree. Maybe slightly flattened. Definitely crushed and bleeding, in more than one place. But dead. That's really the only fact that matters to me.

"Nice," I manage. My heart rate is still through the roof, no matter what I do.

Deverin turns back to follow my gaze. "I should've backed up."

And honestly? I'm really not opposed to it.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

Dimara's arm bleeding is honestly giving me something to focus on.

We've bandaged it up as best we could with what little time we have to focus on it, but every time she moves she agitates it. She's not in any danger, really. Not from that. It's us moving that's worrying to me, but as long as I'm trying to hold the bandages together without her running off on me, it's giving me something to look at and hold onto that's actually purposeful.

It keeps my gaze from wandering. From wondering what's really out there waiting for us next.

Not that Ivory really seems concerned about that. Dimara either. I'm beginning to wonder if it's a One type of thing, because you don't see Ten's doing this very often.

Or ever. Kellen might, but I don't have a single clue where he is. I can just only hope that he's still breathing.

We're basically just keeping up with Ivory, at this rate. I'm becoming slightly alarmed that Dimara's leaving droplets of blood behind us everywhere we go, but that's beside the point. We're looking for Vance, and the Eights. Whoever else may be with them. Alessia's nearby, supposedly. Trying to keep a perimeter, to lock the sniper in.

I don't want to be locked in _anywhere_ with a sniper, thank you very much.

Nobody's really giving us a choice.

We're doing too well. Even Tanis managed to get away from one of them unscathed, if you ignore the few minutes of panic from pretty much everyone. There's so many of them dead already.

That's the issue, though. The ones that are dead don't really seem like they were obstacles. It's the ones that are left.

A sniper. A bomber that helped the pilot ruin everything before it had even started. A girl who no one's even managed to lay eyes on yet. Their leader. Meritt's sister. And the one person not a single soul knows anything about - the replacement that could turn out to be the worst one of all. I'm not sure how much worse it could get, at this point, but I'm not about to pretend otherwise. Something will happen to one of us eventually. I'm sure of it. Something that's more threatening than most things we've dealt with.

"We're not far," Ivory says. "You guys still on the other side of the courtyard?"

"Sure are," Mia says. "I'm shocked you're still intact."

I wish I could tell people to stop joking about this, but that's justhow some of us are choosing to cope. They're keeping their sanity, I'm trying not to panic. Basically the usual.

"Sniper's on the second floor," Audrel says. "If he's headed your way I'm going to lose him - there's no cameras that way."

"Fantastic," Dimara mutters, but pulls me a little faster after her the second we're in sight of the doors that must lead to the courtyard. There's sunlight flooding in through the windows, illuminating even the darkened corners of the hallway. Ivory throws the doors open and the light is blinding for a brief moment, but Dimara's momentum pulls me forward and outside regardless.

The first thing I do catch sight of, regardless of the sun, is the others standing across the courtyard, shielded underneath the balcony, staying close to the wall. There's a difference between knowing Vance is alright and having actual visual confirmation of the fact.

He almost takes a step out into the light.

Almost.

I don't hear anything at all, or see what's going on, but two seconds later Ivory slams into both of us so hard that we go stumbling off the cobblestone pathway and into the tall grass, just behind a rather large fountain. A bullet ricochets off the concrete and bounces back, landing in the grass ten feet away, silent.

"Do not move," Ivory instructs. Not that I can. She's basically laying on me.

I turn my head out of the grass. Vance has backed up all the way to the wall with the others. I can't see any other way but forward. No way to tell where that bullet came from.

"Far end of the courtyard," Mia says. "He's on the balcony."

"No shit, Mia," Ivory snarls.

"Don't get snarky on me now. You don't move either."

This is great. This is just great. What the hell are we supposed to do now? He's got two options - wait for someone to poke their head out like a damn gopher and shoot them, or move down the balcony and get us another way. We don't even have _one_ option.

"What do we do?" Dimara asks.

"I'm trying to think."

"Don't hurt yourself," Mia responds, and I can feel the irritated sigh all throughout Ivory's body.

"Shut _up_ , Mia—"

The door behind us cracks open, but not one of us can look back to see who it is before someone comes skidding through the grass next to us. Fenton lands with a thud and nearly crushes what little of me is still left exposed, somehow completely ignoring the bullet that gets sent his way. Apparently he doesn't really care.

"Hey," he says, and then winces. "Ow. Need some help?"

"Mental help," Ivory gets out. Both her and Fenton pop their heads back up at nearly the same time, and there's a bullet passing through the space just above their heads in response. This really isn't good. How are we supposed to move?

"You're the Sentinel," Dimara says. "What do we do?"

Fenton's no older than she is. He could be younger, by a few months. This is who we're relying on to get us out of this right now. He crawls forward through the grass a few feet, nearly rounding the edge of the fountain. Maybe he can see what's going on. It would be nice for that to be true.

"Everyone just be ready to shoot."

I thought that would give me a bit more warning than it actually does. I see guns come out, from more than one person, but I'm not really capable of moving myself. Fenton rises up to his hands and knees; another inch and he'll be in view, too easy to shoot.

"That," he says, very quietly. "Or get ready to run."

I'm still not really ready for him to get up and run.

Not away. Not saving himself.

Towards it.

* * *

 **Kiero Mearlove, 26 years, Victor of the 150 Hunger Games.**

* * *

Fenton is ten times braver than he thinks he could ever be capable of.

It doesn't even make sense. He's watching a kid eight years younger than him take off across the courtyard, directly into the line of fire, towards where he's sure the sniper is, drawn back into the shadows where he belongs.

As soon as he starts running the shots start popping up, in rhythm. Fire, re-adjust, re-aim, fire again.

He feels incredibly useless at this moment in time, but it doesn't really come as a shock. This is something we was never made for. He wasn't made for the Games and he wasn't made for war, but he also couldn't run from either of those two things when he was looking them in the face. He's only here right now because he's not sure who's more likely to get involved in something they can't get out of - Mia or Aveza. Hell, even Vance seems like an option right now.

He's here because he wouldn't let Della come, but someone had to be the rationale behind all of this.

But if he's surviving this, rationale has to go out the window.

Mia's already shooting. That's good. At least she's distracting him. Ivory too. He has zero clue who gave Aveza a crossbow and where they got it from; he isn't sure he wants to know the answer.

He grabs her sleeve and she nearly turns the crossbow back on him. "Listen to me. I know it's not the same thing, but you're a sniper too. So _out-snipe him._ "

"You're right," Aveza agrees. "Not the same thing at all."

"That's not what I meant. Just get a good shot on him. I know you can."

And he's not sure about anyone else. Mia and Ivory may be able to shoot for hours and not hit anything. Aveza's the most recent. Aveza killed the most people, as surprising as that may be. And he knows she can do it, because he sure can't.

Everyone seems to be focused on doing something, and Vance is looking right at him. It would be nice, if he could believe he was just waiting for instructions. He knows that's not it. He's waiting to see what he's going to do, and whether or not he can participate.

It's a miracle Eight has as many Victor's as they do, if Kiero's being honest with himself.

"You coming with me?" he asks, and Vance nods.

"What are you two doing?" Mia snaps, at the same time Kiero wonders just how many people he's going to get a talking to from later, for this. Della, and Rayon, and then Soren's going to lock him in the bathroom and never let him out once they get home.

He grabs Vance's arm and hauls him out into the open space of the courtyard.

Fenton's nearly made it to the far left side. There's a staircase there, but he won't be able to get up it with all the attention focused on him. The second Kiero drags Vance out there's no need to say anything, no need to explain. Vance takes off on him before he's even prepared for it, arm ripped out of his grasp, headed for the opposite side. The bullets start up again. Kiero watches them pepper the ground, put holes in the ground. There are bullets going up the other way, too. Trying to hit him before he hits one of them.

He won't be able to live with himself if he gets Vance killed, or any of them. Especially after all of this.

But he also knows better than to try and stop someone, when they're determined to do something anyway.

A bullet hits the railing right next to where he can see the sniper rifle poking out. Closer. Just one lucky shot and they can do this. But a distraction would make it go a lot quicker.

Fenton cleared half the stairs, with the sniper's attention safely diverted to the two of them. He can't look back and wait for Fenton to get his footing on the actual balcony; he's too focused on shoving Vance down on the stairs the second he catches up with him, completely flattened to the ground. A bit of concrete flies away as a bullet buries itself just next to their heads. They just have to hope it won't give way.

"Stay here," he orders. The bullets aren't going their way, anymore. He's looking back at Fenton, again. The real problem.

Kiero still stays low, hugging the wall along the stairs. He has a gun. He just has to get there. The weight of it in his hands is nearly enough to make him sick, enough to bring him back to the arena and the agonizing pain of the bullet in his own shoulder, before they pulled him out.

He gets to the balcony and Fenton has already thrown himself behind a pillar. The sniper rifle is still set up, holding firm, but the man himself is turned the other way, a pistol in his hands, trying to land a hit. Kiero can't tell if he actually has.

He can't help but remember what Spens had said, ten years ago now. Telling him not to be sorry. Words that he still hears in the back of his head more often than he'd like, completely unshakable. But they're the one thing that have always made him realize that he just needs to do things. He can't regret them all the time.

He raises the gun, and fires.

It's different with a bow, just like Aveza said. If it was an arrow Kiero is sure he'd have hit him square in the back, just like Hariwin. That he'd be watching him fall.

The bullet hits him in the shoulder and rips clean out the other side. He stumbles forward a bit, rising up a foot or two, hell bent on turning around to kill him now that there's someone else to focus on—

An arrow tears through his neck and splatters his blood all over the back wall.

It's a shock, seeing him so quickly about to turn around, and then watching his dead body slump back against the wall in the next second. He hates how steady the gun still is in his hand but won't let himself feel sorry about it, can't when this man would've killed all of them, given the opportunity.

"Sniper is dead!" Ivory crows, a little wildly, and Vance repeats the words, managing to sound a bit more calm. Kiero's not even sure _he_ feels that calm, but having others along the earpieces know does make him feel better.

It fades quite a lot when Fenton stumbles around the edge of the pillar, clutching at what appears to be his very rapidly bleeding thigh. His breath catches in his throat for a minute, but even Fenton manages to look up and manage a smile, even if it's half a grimace.

"I thought I would be quick enough. My bad."

"I'm good," he continues, the second Kiero gets close. "I'm good, don't worry."

"I know, I know. Sit down."

He very carefully lowers him to the ground, refusing to let himself panic. It's a lot of blood, but it shouldn't be life-threatening. Vance must have already noticed, because he's disappeared back down the stairs, probably headed for someone's supplies.

Fenton's handling this far too well, for someone with a bullet in his leg.

"You know," Kiero starts. "When I got shot I was sobbing hysterically and trying not to scream."

"Sorry to disappoint you?"

He watches Fenton's lips quirk up again. Because this is normal, just having an every day, casual conversation about his rather god awful time in the Games with a Sentinel who's much younger than he is, like it happens all the time. They're going to be pissed about this, he reckons. It'll make them fight harder. Make this end quicker.

He looks back at the body on the balcony, and even with the blood soaking through his hands, feels a sense of relief come over him. "Believe me. I'm not disappointed."

* * *

Is this really that bad? Nah, not yet anyway.

Until next time.


	53. Becoming Death

District Two; Esterwick Government Complex, northern quadrant.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

Beckett is going to hate me for approximately all of this.

I said that I would be safe, that I would be careful, that I would be well protected. That his little brother, the real one, would come back.

Issue is, I don't remember being this stupid before.

I don't know where anyone is. I don't even know where I am, if I'm being perfectly honest. The second the explosions went off, the second I was out of the cover of the car, I just took off. That's what Celia _told_ me to do, if things went that badly. But hindsight is 20/20, I guess. What did Celia even expect me to do, if I ended up alone? Wander around in circles, holding onto a scythe, really hoping and praying that someone nice finds me before someone bad does?

Apparently. Even if that's not what she envisioned, it's what I'm doing anyway.

I think I might be further in than anyone else, too. It would be easy to figure out, if anything at all was coming through my earpiece. I think landing outside the car might have jostled something in it, or broken it. Every few minutes I'll hear _something_ but it's nothing discernible. Someone could tell me where I am, or which direction to go to find the nearest people, but it doesn't appear that I'm going to get that lucky.

It appears that I'm so far back that they may not have expected us to make it that far. There's evidence of explosions having been set off, holes leading from the outside walls to the roads just on the other side. Their practice grounds, maybe, for what they were going to do to us at the beginning.

There's a camera up in the far right corner, and I glance up at it. If only someone could tell me if they see me.

It's almost worse, with no one around. I keep expecting someone to pop up and chase me, or just not bother and kill me outright. But there's no one here. I glance out one of the holes and the entrance to the building is further than I expected, with how much I've twisted and turned throughout the building itself. I can still see the smoke, though, and what's left of the fire in it's place.

And I just have that feeling, that someone really is lurking around back here.

Or, you know, I'm still being stupid, and the others have killed them all already.

I open a door to a stairwell, the first one that leads down instead of up. It only goes down for a floor before there's an exit door, but what's beyond that is dark. There's no telling where it goes.

It feels like the reaper all over again. And no matter how terrible of a decision that seemed, at the time, it all worked out in the end, did it not?

The scythe is getting heavy, though. Almost too heavy to carry for much longer.

I creep down the stairs anyway, still resolved to hold onto at least until the bottom, and look through the window. The darkness stretches out for quite a while, only randomly illuminated by lights on the ceiling every ten or fifteen feet. It's a parkade. A rather empty one, considering there's only a few lone cars, but they're scattered every which way. There's a ramp not far away, daylight on the other side. That's where it goes back above ground. But besides that it's not really much, save for the camera by the door. At least someone will know I'm here, hopefully.

I've still got a knife, and a gun that I'm not even sure I fully know how to operate, so I leave the scythe just inside the door, just in case. Give my arms a break for a minute while I edge open the door and look around, because that's all it'll take, and then I'll be back.

If only foolish optimism ever got anyone anywhere.

All of the cars look like they've been here for a while. I can't help but wonder what happened to the people that were still working in this building when all of the Sentinels showed up in the first place. By the looks of the parkade a lot of them left and got out before anything bad could happen, but there's still these few. Who knows if they killed them, or just chased them off on foot.

And who knows if we'll ever really know.

There's the sound very far off of something exploding, and I head for the ramp to get a better look. It didn't sound nearly as big as anything that could have come from the jet, but is an explosion really ever good?

It's almost enough to cover up the less distant sound of a car engine revving to life.

Almost, but not quite.

I freeze, the sunlight mere footsteps away, and look over my shoulder. There's a pair of headlights slicing through the darkness, but whatever car it's coming from is blocked by a combination of the other cars and the pillars supporting the structure. The lights are nearly touching the edge of the door that I came through, though. Much too close for me to try and run back there and get up the stairs. That would be the best option, but it's already been eliminated.

There's nowhere to go but outside.

I throw myself up the ramp as quickly as I can, not even thinking about another option. Not thinking about what could happen. I hear the car again, and then the harsh rumble of the engine re-firing, the thrum of the tires starting to move against the pavement. It turns into a harsh squeal in a matter of seconds as it speeds up too fast. There's a wishful prayer inside me, hoping that it will backfire, that it'll be too fast for the car to manage.

It's not. Prayer isn't fact, and I already know it.

I'm almost fully up. I'll almost hit the road. I can see it, and how it twists and turns back towards the front of the buildings, but it seems so far away, when I can hear the car moving up behind me, too fast.

Even up until the last second, I expect it to stop. For me to make it to the top just in time to see someone get out of the driver's seat, laughing like they had just pulled off the most elaborate joke they could possibly think of.

I do get to the top.

The second after that, it collides with me.

Everything is reduced to a static mess of colors. It's no longer than a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity; I only managed to turn around a mere hair before the front of the car slams into my side. After that, everything's a blur. Like several snapshots taken in a burst. My head cracks into the hood and then half my body crashes into the windshield. It gives way, beneath me, but I'm already back in the air, and I can't tell what's the car or what's the flat gray pavement of the road, which way's up and which's way down.

It's when I finally land on the ground that the pain hits.

My side hits first, the opposite one, and then my shoulder bounces off the concrete like a rubber ball. Searing, blinding agony travels all the way through my torso and into my chest, and then I can't breathe. My vision is threatening to give way around the edges, but it's like I'm not even conscious to begin with, just sensing pain over and over again, unable to figure out where it's coming from or why it's happening.

There were too many things that could be considered the worst one. The blood dripping off the side of my face, how my left shoulder was incapable of moving the right way, my wrist burning and sending agony rippling back along my arm and into my chest the second I even try to get a hand underneath myself. I end up in a heap along the ground, convinced I'll never be able to move again.

Everything is too quiet, compared too before, save for the never-ending ringing in my ears, and the harsh burst of static as the earpiece tries to connect through once again.

The car door opens. Even with my face half crushed to the ground I see a set of slender legs leave the car, the crunch of boots against the gravel. Everything is burning. All the skin on my arm is ripped open from where I skidded along the ground.

"—Rooke?"

That's my name, I realize distantly. Not coming from whoever's just in front of me. Foggy, directly in my ear. I tilt my head to the side and even that aches, but without my ear pressed to the ground I start to _hear things_ , miraculously.

"Rooke, get up!"

Someone can see me. There's a camera somewhere. I try to look up, towards the side of the building, and all of the brick and mortar blends into one. Someone can see me, understands what's happening, finally. It's the only thing I can think of, even as the legs get closer. A boot comes up, and I wait for the kick that separates my head from my shoulders. Instead it slams into my chest, the soles flattening along my torn and ragged shirt, and the pain re-ignites again. Crushing me. That's what it feels like. My chest is going to collapse under the weight.

"Hey, kiddo," someone says, a woman that could be anyone, with how fogged over my eyes are. "Wanna tell me where all your friends are?"

She leans down, her boot still anchored against my chest, and I feel the knife disappear from my belt, hear the sound of it sliding away across the pavement. She takes the gun next, and keeps that for herself.

"Rooke, we're coming for you right now," someone says, in the earpiece. "Just keep her talking."

"Don't," I choke out, hardly able to focus on that single word.

"Don't worry," she says. "I'll wait until someone shows up looking for you, and then I'll kill you. I won't make you watch."

No. That can't happen. Someone can't come this way, not now. She just ran me down like nothing, god only knows what she'll do to everyone else, and she c _an't_ —

I'm beyond hysterical. There's no word for what I am right now. She digs her foot in a little harder and the tears I hadn't even noticed burning my eyes finally slide down. My cheeks start to burn, and when the tears wobble off and hit the ground they're mixed with blood, my blood all over the place and coating my hands and running thin all over the ground underneath.

She takes a step back and I can't even muster enough energy to take another deep breath.

Very slowly, I start to ease myself upright. She doesn't do anything but stand there, pulling the radio out of her belt. I can't make out a single thing she's saying, the radio held up close to her mouth, but she's not trying to stop me. My right wrist is one of the only things that doesn't feel like it's on fire, along with my legs. I just need to get up; if I can get up, she'll follow me. She'll follow me back down, as long as she doesn't know. As long as she thinks I'm leading her back to someone else.

"Yeah, he's trying to get up," she says, a bit louder, and then smiles at me. "Keep an eye out for anyone headed this way."

There's too much blood in my mouth, and it's threatening to choke me. It's all I can taste, all I can practically smell, besides the harsh scent of gasoline and the warm concrete underneath me.

I grapple at the wall with one hand, and rise up as much as I can. Only about halfway, clutching at my ribs with the other, wondering if my chest is threatening to collapse from the inside out. The second I straighten up even further I can't help the cry that finally forces it's way out, tears leaking down my face.

The ramp looks so long from here, so steep.

I keep a hand on the wall and start downward.

There's still someone's voice floating through the earpiece, but I block it out. I hear what sounds almost like an irritated sigh from behind me, as I take my first wobbling steps down the ramp, praying that my insides stay together. My hand is leaving a bloody smear all down the wall, more gravel gathering against my palm the further down I go.

The door's not that far. I can make it. It's doubling across my vision, the now empty parking space taunting me. I should've noticed. I should have seen her sooner, figured that something was up.

But I didn't.

Of course I didn't.

It's like old times, practically stumbling around, all on my own, nothing but the stale air and the threat of something on my heels that's keeping me walking. I nearly crash headlong into the last pillar before the door, bracing my hand against it for a second, trying to fill my lungs before I know I won't have another chance to. She's walking after me leisurely, an afternoon stroll, spinning my gun around in her hands.

I _do_ walk into the door, the momentum just barely enough to push it open, and I slam my foot against it the last little bit, the only part of my body that's still really listening. It opens that last little bit, giving me one last break, and I lean up against the doorframe, fumbling around the corner. I feel my hand close around it, that sleek cool metal one of the only constants left in my life.

"You were the one alone at the end, right?" she asks. She's just behind me. Watching me like I'm stuck in a cage, wondering what I'll do next. "Do you think anyone's actually going to come for you?"

Bringing me back to the Games, like today has been, over and over again. First the reaper and now this, being reminded that everyone had someone those last few days besides me, that it's a miracle I even walked out of there at all.

"No," I manage.

No one's going to come for me.

Not because they don't want to, though. Not because I don't matter, or because they don't care.

Because I told them not to.

"That's sad," she comments. Is that genuine concern in her voice? I'm not going to bet on it. No one can see me, now. The camera's high up in the corner, cast over our heads. No one's going to know what happened here, and I'm not sure I'll be able to tell them.

And maybe that is sad.

Maybe it's the worst thing of all.

I reach around the corner with my other hand, even though my arm and my entire _body_ screams in protest at the action. My hand locks around the handle of the scythe, joining the other one that's already holding on for dear life, because right now it really is the difference. Between what happens to me right here, right now, when no one's watching.

Her eyes don't even widen, when she sees the scythe.

And if it weren't for that flicker, that last little ounce of _fear_ , I'd have believed she knew it was there all along.

But she didn't. And her hands don't come up in time to stop it, when the blade slams into her chest.

My arms tremble viciously, holding onto the weight. I feel the impact, as the curved hook of the blade sinks through the layers of fabric across her torso and then into skin, muscle, splitting through the center of her chest with every single ounce of force I could manage to put behind it.

She stumbles backwards, and my hands go limp, letting the handle go. It cracks into the floor. She wobbles another pace backward, as a spot of blood starts to bloom outward from where the blade is still stuck in, and then she careens backwards and hits the floor. She's gasping - frantic, high-pitched sounds that sound like the beginning of a scream that she can't get out.

I end up on the floor a few seconds after she does.

I don't remember my legs giving out, or my hands sliding down the wall to follow the descent of my body. The next thing I know I'm lying on the ground, half-curled in on myself, still crying, the threat of a hysterical sob trying to break free from my chest.

Someone's still saying my name. I don't know who it is. _I don't know who it is._

And I can't focus enough to figure out who it is, either. I can't even breathe. That's the worst part. I can't get enough air, and everything is spinning, and I know the handle of the scythe just out of my reach would be covered in my blood, if the utter blackness wasn't disguising it.

I can't figure out who's asking after me, or how to breathe, or how to stop all the blood, the tears, the _agony_ —

I can't.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

"He's not answering," Dimara says. Not at all calmly.

That would be more helpful, you know, if I hadn't already realized that and begun the process of running the sixty different options of why exactly Rooke's not answering through my head.

The last thing we know is that he made it back inside the parkade and passed just by the last camera that led to the stairwell, the one from Eight following him. And after that, nothing. Some mild, hardly recognizable noises, just on the other side. And then nothing. It's a very giant _nothing_ , all of us waiting for a response that it doesn't look like we're going to get.

Audrel said it was bad. That _he_ was bad. You don't need the gory details to fill in the gaps that she's left unsaid.

"How far are we from there?" I ask. "We're in the courtyard with Fenton still."

"Not far. Probably closer than anyone that's not already occupied."

"Okay, we're going then," Dimara responds.

"Don't have to tell me twice," I agree.

Fenton's leg may not be bleeding any less, but it hasn't gotten worse. He's still insisting that he's fine, and they're keeping pressure on it. It seems to be working. Ivory's been keep watching on the far end of the balcony, while everyone else try to fix it. There's nothing for me to do here, and not for Dimara and Kelsea either. No way we're just going to sit here while something like this is happening.

"Just be careful," Kiero insists. "Stay together."

Easier said than done. Dimara is already headed down the stairs, and Kelsea gives me one last worried, panicked look and chases after her.

"Do my best," is all I can offer. Ivory scowls at that, just before I pass her on the balcony and go after them.

Dimara stays ahead nearly the entire time, but Kelsea slows down, mostly for my benefit. I don't know how Dimara's arm isn't throbbing every time her feet hit the ground, each one of them, even through all the bandages packed over top of it. Walking after my any wound to me was agony Audrel's giving us directions, telling us when to turn and when to move through a doorway or not. She's only half-focused on us; there's other people to worry about, other dangers. I'm not so much listening to her as I'm trusting Dimara to be making the right moves.

Regardless of what Audrel is focused on or not, though, we don't see anyone the whole time we're running there. Save for the random explosions still being triggered closer to the front of the building, everything seems too quiet.

Quiet's not good.

I round the corner after the two of them, and out a window to my right can see a car, half-skidded into the road, still idling.

Dimara throws open the door at the end of the hallway, and stops.

Two seconds later Kelsea runs right into her, almost failing to catch herself against the railing of the stairs. That doesn't really leave me any room to go either, so I cram myself right at the top of the stairs next to them. The looks on their faces alone almost doesn't make me want to know.

But I have to.

There's no choice in the matter.

There's two bodies at the bottom of the stairs. One that's half fallen through the doorway. The scythe is awkwardly twisted into the middle of her chest, the rest of it falling off to the side of her body. And there's Rooke, crumpled in on himself not far from the last step. It hardly even looks like him.

"Oh, oh god, no," Kelsea stammers. "Is he—"

"Nope," Dimara says, unwilling to hear the last part of that sentence, because whether it's true or not nobody really wants to. She shoves herself past me and Kelsea, the rest of the stairs swallowed up in a blur as I move to follow her. Both of us gingerly step over where Rooke's still lying, completely motionless. Up close it's even more alarming, how covered in his own blood he really is. I'm nervous to even kneel down by his head, regardless of if I'm touching him.

But he's breathing. The rise and fall of his chest is very faint, but it's there.

"What do we do?" I ask. Dimara's staring down at him very wide-eyed, holding a hand out but clearly unsure where to put it. You think they show Careers everything; pictures and diagrams, how to make splints and slings like stitching up a broken doll. But this is an actual person, this is _Rooke_ we're talking about, and I think he's ten times worse, possibly excluding what happened to Blair, than anything Dimara's ever had to deal with. Even the scissors weren't this bad. There's shards of glass embedded in the edge of his jaw and down his neck, stretching even to the juncture of his shoulder, broken chunks of it stuck in the palms of his hands. Everything's covered in a slick of blood.

"Talk to him," she instructs. The second she gets up I move myself into her spot, hands fluttering just as uselessly as hers were. I watch her step through the doorway, grabbing and pulling at the handle of the scythe with a rip that definitely didn't need to be as harsh at it is, more of the girl's blood splattering along the floor and all over her boots before she steps into the dimness of the parkade, the scythe still held high.

She's talking to Audrel. Trying to protect us.

I turn back to Rooke and Kelsea is very carefully crouched behind him, reaching over to touch one of the lone spots of his exposed arm that isn't covered by a healthy dose of road rash. It feels like my heart is in my throat. I can barely hear whatever she's saying, murmuring quietly to him, trying to say anything that will make him open his eyes.

I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking at. Kelsea glances up, something nervous in her eyes, and I nod. Her hands are shaking.

"You're doing good. Don't worry."

It's not a few seconds later that he stirs, very faintly, under her hand. Instantly she retracts it, eyes wide, but leans in a little closer.

"Rooke? It's okay, you're safe, we got you."

Do we really? And is he even safe? Do we have answers, for any of that?

He moves again, though, fingers twitching against the ground, and then his eyes crack open. Hardly more than a sliver, but that sliver is enough to see him look directly at me, eyes blurry and unfocused. His mouth tries to move, form around something that could be my name, but a second later he coughs weakly, blood spattering across the ground just in front of him, and his whole body tenses. He closes his eyes again, agony clearly written across his face, and I very carefully put a hand on his shoulder, praying that I'm not making it worse.

"Take it easy, you're okay," I say, unsure if I even believe myself. "Just don't move."

I don't hear Dimara headed back but she drops herself down by my side a second later, and the scythe hits the ground with a harsh clang. Rooke winces, eyes fluttering back open. I don't think he even knows who to focus on.

"We have to move," Dimara insists. "Medics are hung up out front."

Rooke's hand reaches out, and before it can even get halfway there Dimara grabs onto it. Holds tight.

"Can't," he manages. "Can't walk. Can't breathe."

"No one said you were walking alone," she points out, but she gently reaches for his other hand, the one that's clutching tight to his side, and pulls it free. Her hand rests there for a moment, up against his ribcage, and then she presses her fingers in. He lets out a harsh, half-stifled yell, and Kelsea jumps, more tears beginning to come out of his eyes and pass through the already-existing streaks across his face.

"Did it hit you on this side?" she asks, and he nods, almost frantically. Like he'd do anything to get her hand away.

"Other side good, or is it just as bad?"

"It's— it's okay, I think."

"Now listen to me," she orders. "Actually think about this. Is it getting any harder to breathe, or has it been the same?"

It looks like lying there is causing him an unbearable amount of pain, let alone breathing. He squeezes his eyes shut. Every breath is coming in a ragged, harsh gasp, like he's forcing them out, and every time his whole body trembles.

"It's the same."

"Okay, that's good."

"Is it?"

"Yeah. It means your ribs are broken all along that side but they haven't punctured your lung. Which would be a problem."

"O-Oh."

Yeah. Oh. Thank god she's here right now, or Kelsea and I would probably be managing to make this situation somehow worse. I don't think Rooke would appreciate that, when his day's already gone worse than he probably ever imagined. He lifts his head up a bit, probably as much as he can manage. It almost gives him a clear view of the doorway, and the body lying just beyond it.

"Totaled her, dude," I inform him, and he drops his head back to the ground with a very harsh thunk. Kelsea brushes a hand through his hair, stained with blood, and glass comes tinkering down onto the floor behind him.

"T-Think she totaled me."

"That's not funny," Dimara gets out. Personally, if Rooke's willing to joke about it, then I'll take that over him screaming. I don't figure it's going to last long, though. Dimara moves to his other side and shoves me a bit closer. We have to get him up, get a person who probably shouldn't even be walking, to his feet and moving all the way back to the front of the building.

You can see the blood trail, from here out into the parkade. There's physical evidence of how much it took him to get this far.

But at least now he's not alone. At least this time he'll have us to lean on and hold onto, and he won't have to worry about anything, because we'll be there. There's a reason Dimara went out into the parkade before she did anything else.

This was always about protecting each other, as long as we could.

We already failed once. I don't think any of us have any desire to fail again.

"You ready?" Dimara asks. Rooke takes a deep breath, one that shakes his entire chest, and I force myself to do the same. This is going to take a lot of work. And patience. And the ability to deal with renewed screaming, the second we really begin to move him.

"No," Rooke says, but squeezes her hand, feebly. Kelsea nods.

"Ready as I'll ever be," I say.

I'm not ready.

But if there's anything I think we've all learned, through all of this, it's that the world hasn't ever cared when we've been ready or not.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

"You guys got him?" I hear Rory ask.

"Give us five minutes," Dimara pleads. "I'll give you an update when we're not stuck on the floor."

"Is he okay, though?"

No answer to that. I'd like to think that if Rooke was dead they wouldn't be reacting this way, that they would be telling us more than the bare minimum. Or maybe they're just not trying to worry us, in the middle of all this.

"He's okay," Seren insists, and squeezes my arm. "They have him. Just trust that."

I do trust that, unfortunately for me. That still doesn't mean I want to know. It would be nice to have some sort of actual confirmation, before I went tromping off to probably get myself beat to death. But hey, better me than Rooke, I guess.

Okay, so maybe going to look for Seren wasn't the greatest idea. I knew Seren would stick with Luca, and I knew exactly who Luca would be going after when he got the opportunity. I also know that Luca could kick my ass into next week, if he really felt strongly about it, and the guy we're looking for is supposedly worse. A hell of a lot more brutal.

There's three of us, and even Luca doesn't look confident about our odds.

It's really reassuring.

I never expected Luca to tell me anything about the guy, except for the bare minimum. It's hard to ask that of Seren, who never met the guy in the first place, but I'm sure she's heard stories. Probably a lot of stories, considering just how much time she spent in the woods with a group of people who lived around him constantly. At this point she's probably hoping to shield me from the worst of the details, or she's just hoping we'll never run into the fucker, so we won't have to find out.

If we don't run into _him_ , then who's left? The bomber? Carnelia? The replacement, for god's sake?

It's almost more tempting, to run into their so-called leader. Maybe if that happens, what little is left will fall apart.

Because we need it to, and fast. Rooke was just the first of the nine of us that could possibly go down. Frankly, let's not let it get to that point, where we have to scrape more than one person off the floor just to keep them up.

We're just walking blind. At this point I'm expecting it to happen. I have a feeling this guy, wherever he may be, has already seen us at some point, when we haven't been looking the right way. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the one following _us_ , but even checking over my shoulder every few seconds produces nothing. No flicker out of the corner of my eye, no shadow where there shouldn't be.

The Eight was lying in wait for Rooke. For anyone, really, he just happened to be the first person that stumbled on her. Watching and waiting for him to put himself in a vulnerable position, so that she could strike.

"Okay," Dimara says, true to herself, a few minutes later. "I think we're good."

"She dead?"

"Sure is."

"Would it be fucked up to say that makes me a little proud?"

"Probably," Dimara huffs. I really don't envy her right now. "But he can't hear you - I took his earpiece out. It's just distracting him."

"Well, tell him I'm proud, then."

There's grumbling then, a muttered _no_. Well, at least I know they're up and walking, Rooke in tow. At least I know that he's somehow alive after he killed someone he probably shouldn't have been able to kill on his own. That does serve to make it worse, though. Rooke was one person, all on his own, when he killed her. And Luca's really that worried about three of us, versus one guy?

"Let you know when we find Two," I tell her. "Or, you know, you'll have to come and pick me up off the floor too."

"I only have two arms," she insists. "Don't get your ass kicked."

Easier said than done. I've already gotten my ass kicked during all of this more than I would've liked. And my head is still ringing faintly, too. Curse the ground for being as hard as it is.

It's still better than being hit by a car.

"Alright, stop talking," Luca instructs. "We don't have that much more to look through. He'll be around here somewhere."

Not exactly the motivational, confidence-building speech I was hoping for, but I guess I'll have to take it. The bomber's probably back in the main building, where the jet landed, but we're closer to the back of the complex by now. Judging by Meritt ditching Kane he's probably off looking for his sister, and I have no doubt that she's looking for him too. I don't really want to be around for that.

Someone will deal with the bomber. Rory and Ronan are looking, and now that someone's found Rooke I'm sure Celia is too. Nadir and Tanis aren't that far off, if they need help.

So this one's on us. On me.

It's no big deal.

And as long as I keep telling myself that, hopefully it will be.

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

It seems like someone's always going running for Rooke.

There's a little part of me this time that's grateful it isn't me. I'm not sure I'd know or want to deal with how bad off he is, judging by what Dimara's said. And to think that he killed someone, before they found him. If he was alright, safe and sound, I think he'd be reacting about how I did. The only reason he's not is because the pain is the first, and probably only thing, at the front of his mind.

I don't think Celia's that far away. I also know, without words, that she really does feel terrible this. We took our eyes off him for two seconds, Rooke practically disappeared, and look what happened to him.

It shouldn't have happened in the first place.

It's hard to think about that and really be focusing at the same time. Ronan's pretty dead-set on finding the bomber, after what we saw outside. After what she did to all of the people we once knew.

I never thought _find the bomber_ would be something I had in my vocabulary.

"Any update?" Ronan asks.

"On Sabille?" Audrel replies. "Last I saw her she was coming in through an exit door from the roof. Wherever she is now she's keeping well hidden. Away from the cameras, anyway."

Sabille. Right. It's easy to forget that all of these people have names. A lot of these people were probably like me, before the Sentinels took them. Really heavily opposed to this whole murder thing, as long as we're not in any danger. Just hoping for a normal life, for themselves and for their families. They got that all ripped away from them. But I have to distance that between what I _know_ , and that's that they've already killed too many people.

There are charges everywhere. Demolitions set up down every hall. Tanis said it, but now I've seen it with my own two eyes.

We're not far from where the building last shook, either.

She's close. We can tell.

"Hold on," Ronan says, and then practically hits me in the chest to stop me. "Think I saw something."

I freeze behind him, just beyond the corner. He's peering around it, looking towards a main staircase that stretches beyond my range of vision. The room's huge, the staircase taking up nearly half of it, and it must be leading to the second floor and balcony beyond. There's a charge on the far door, leading into another room, and one at the edge of the stairs.

"She's luring us in," I murmur.

"I know. So let her lure us."

So, Ronan said he wanted to watch over us, make sure we were okay. I didn't think that meant practically pulling me behind him into something like this. It makes me feel better that he's here, but what good is that really going to do, in the thick of things? I'm going to be terrified no matter what.

Rooke killed one of them, I remind myself.

It can't be that bad.

Ronan takes a step out into the open. Doesn't even raise the gun. Looks around casually. Maybe he's trying to fool her into thinking we don't know what's going on, that we're naive and foolish and unaware that we're about to die. He gestures at me, and I move quickly to follow. It's better that we're together. She can't possibly kill both of us at the same time.

"Rory?" Nadir says in my ear, and I don't respond. I'm practically holding my breath. I don't want to make any more noise than I really need to.

He's nearly under the stairs, now. At least there we'll have some cover, but we really won't be able to see above us, either. She's got to be watching us, eyes like a hawk, wondering where we're going. If we leave this room, she probably follows us. Shoots us in the back the second we think we're home free. But we're not going to leave, and hopefully she doesn't know that.

I pause under the stairs next to him, while he looks up, waiting to hear something. And maybe we won't.

I think that's something we're used to by now, though.

But this isn't the usual times. We both hear the beeping, rhythmic, not nearly loud enough to match what it's attached to, and the amount of damage it can only do. I want nothing more than to run, to at least see what's going on, but Ronan holds me there.

Tanis says my name again, and my heart is thundering so loud I almost don't hear it. I force myself to keep quiet.

The pillar fifteen feet in front of us explodes in a shower of rock and marble. It's under the stairs, coupled with several other pillars. The balcony won't give way with only one of them gone, but clearly she's got her plans. And I hadn't even _seen_ that charge there. How many others could there be? And how long is it going to take before she finally sets something off close enough to do some damage?

The dust settles, the last few bits of rock coming to a halt on the ground in front of us, and something in the air shifts, behind us.

Changes.

Neither of us turn in time.

The crack of the gunshot nearly makes me dive forward, but I don't get the chance. Ronan slams into me regardless with a hoarse, pained yell, and then hits the ground on top of me. I can't even see what's happening.

He rolls off of me not a second after, the ability to breathe returned to me once again, but it still doesn't help me figure out what's happening. There's blood on the floor, but it's not coming from me. There's a figure at the bottom of the stairs. Sabille. There's the gun, where the bullet came from, and Ronan's moving away from me, blood dripping down his back before he turns around to look at me—"

"Move!"

I do, just before she fires off another shot. Not aiming for Ronan, who's already injured. Aiming for me. The bullet cracks into the marble a foot away from my head, but she's getting closer. She won't miss forever.

Too close. Ronan doesn't get more than halfway to his feet before he must decide that that's as far as he's getting, and he grabs her before she can get the next shot off. The gun jerks to an awkward angle between them, both of them wrestling for control of it, pointing in any direction that's not certain death.

I don't know who ends up with the gun, but somewhere along the way, something else comes free. Ronan's hand lets go of her a moment to fling something away, and something comes skidding along the ground only a few feet away from me. Black, hardly even the size of the palm of my hand, riddled with buttons that all look the exact same, but I know what it is.

The remote detonator.

Both of them slam to the ground. The gun goes off again, but there's no yell telling me that it hit anyone. I scramble for the remote, moving backwards. She doesn't have it now. I can't risk shooting, or I could hit Ronan. Ronan, who's already hit and bleeding, who won't hold her off forever, and then it's just going to be me, me and her, but I have _this_.

Ronan gets free, for the briefest of seconds, before she's back on him. But in that second he looks directly at me.

"Do it!"

I look down at the remote. I have no idea what any of it does, what could happen.

But I know what's going to happen if I don't.

My finger hovers over the first of the buttons, before I press down against it.

And it's not one regular, even beeping that starts up.

It's dozens.

Sabille stops fighting, her knee against Ronan's chest as she lifts her head up, looking right at me. Her eyes go wide as she looks around, seeing something that I hadn't, until this moment. The charges laid out all across the room, flat up against the pillars. Some tucked into the corners, where the second floor joins the wall of the first. And they're all flashing, all red. The whole room is filled with the same noise.

She flings herself away from him, but I know she won't get away.

I know she won't get away, because I won't either.

The beeping stops.

The entire second floor collapses into a thousand pieces, directly overhead.

* * *

Yikes, eh?

Until next time.


	54. Hold Onto Life

District Two; Esterwick Government Complex, northern quadrant.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

I wish Kane had let me just run back up the ladder to escape what was below it.

That's not how it goes, though. It takes me a while to understand the rationale, of actually clearing out the jet to see what's inside it. Better than leaving it here for any random person to stumble on, where they could pick up a gun they definitely don't need to have and shoot us down before we get a chance to stop them.

It still took an awful lot of convincing, for Kane to make me stay on the ground and wait for him to descend. At that point Tanis was still out there, running from one of them. This entire time Rooke's been getting his ass handed to him and then getting dragged around by the others. God only knows what other sorts of things are going to happen.

I pull a gun out of the jet that's double the width and weight of my arm, nearly stumbling under it's weight, and eventually leave it on the ground resting up against the broken wreckage of the jet.

The pilot is still lying not far away, too. Jenzen, so I've come learn. Should be twenty-two years of age. Originally from District Nine. By all rights and associations a completely normal human being, before the Sentinels dragged him off and turned him into this, someone who wasn't even afraid to die. He was seventeen when the Sentinels fell in the first place and he got pulled into the Capitol's schemes with the rest of the group.

He didn't really deserve it. At least not everything that happened to him before the moment that I shot him in the chest.

It's just really hard to put any justification behind it, looking at him on the ground now.

"Think we're empty," Kane says, and he clambers back out of the front windshield, patches of blood creeping up against the knees of his pants as he slides back out onto the ground next to it, arms full of guns and knives.

"He didn't even try to shoot me."

"He knew he was dead. Guarantee he saw me, too. There was no way out of it. It makes it a lot easier to decide not to fight, when you know that."

Kane somehow sounds like he's speaking from experience; funny for someone who's still standing in front of me, living and breathing. But I see how his gaze flicks around, how he's watching for Meritt even though we both know he's long gone. I heard him ask Audrel once - only once. But she hasn't seen any sign of them. I don't think she will, either, unless Meritt wants to be seen.

He flinches a bit as someone opens the door to the courtyard, but still has his gun raised before I even fully turn around.

I can't help but let out a sigh of relief at the sight of Tanis, completely intact.

"Hey," she calls, jogging over. Her gaze lingers on the body still lying not far away from my feet. No matter how hard anyone tries to ignore it, it keeps coming back.

"Cutting it close, are we?" I ask, but lean forward to hug her regardless. She shouldn't be encouraged for running off on her own in the first place, but like hell if I'm not going to hug her. Blair told her to run. She just listened. I did the same thing, not long after, when he went to look for Seren. At least he found her, in the end. I'm not sure if it really would have been worth it, if he hadn't.

"A little," she replies, and squeezes me back. "Got my ass saved, though. All good."

Is it, though? I'm not so convinced.

"Deverin's watching the hall," she continues. "She should see anyone trying to creep up on us. But I think they're all occupied by now."

"Should be," Kane agrees. "They're going after Lucien, and Ronan and Rory are looking for Sabille, right?"

"They said they were. Haven't said anything in a bit, though."

"Rory?" I ask. Nothing but silence. I just have to think of it as a moment in which he's occupied, probably with remaining undetected. That's for the best; he doesn't need to be replying to us right now, if they're figuring something out.

Kane looks around again. He said nothing about Meritt.

"You should go look for him," I offer. "I know you want to. We're together - Deverin's not far. We'll be fine."

Kane's wanted to leave and look for Meritt since the second he took off on us. It's not a secret. Or at least if it is, it's a poorly disguised one. Kane takes a deep breath, and then nods. Meritt's probably going to need the help, if he really does find his sister. He's bad, and she's worse. How do you fight back against that, when you're nearly as bad as it can really get?

I don't expect him to fight me, and he doesn't. He picks up a few of the extra guns and knives and then takes off on the two of us, back out of the courtyard. Let's just hope Deverin doesn't shoot him.

"Rory?" Tanis asks again. I keep expecting a reply. I can hear Celia getting frustrated, even though she's not speaking much. She probably hoped she would find Sabille, before Rory did.

At least she wouldn't hesitate.

"Let's just hope this is all almost over," I murmur, and Tanis nods. Too many close calls already today. It would be nice if we could just get this over with, the sun would set, we could fix everything up and go up. Fix everyone, I remind myself. God knows certain people are going to need fixing, after what they've been through. I think _I'm_ going to need fixing.

I hear a gunshot, closer than the rest that are still echoing occasionally outfront from the Peacekeepers, but it's hard to be concerned. It's hard to really think that it's something bad. Gunfire is gunfire. Like music, at this point. The noise of an every day crowd. Something I keep just expecting to hear, no matter where I go. It's easier that way. Less surprising.

What is surprising is the explosion, so big that it rocks the ground underneath my feet. Tanis grabs my arm. The whole building shakes, big as it is. Up on the eastern side I don't so much as see it happen as the dust comes into the air, windows blowing out from the force of the blast. Even the fire, before it's extinguished as it hits the outside air. It's huge. Bigger than anything I've ever seen. Bigger than even the ones out front, right when half the world got blown to hell.

"Rory?" Celia asks.

"Oh, shit," Tanis says.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, District Four Female.**

* * *

I'm not sure how I know, but some sort of awful feeling settles over me regardless.

It's like how animals take off first, when there are signs of a storm. How you can hear the birds before the thunderstorm comes crashing in. They always know, even if they can't possibly. They know it's coming.

The whole building quakes with the explosion. I stop dead in my tracks in the middle of the hallway, completely exposed and completely uncaring.

I ask after Rory. He doesn't answer.

"Audrel, where were they?"

"Up near the main side entrance, last I saw them."

"Is that where that came from?"

She doesn't answer, and it feels like my heart falls onto the floor. Someone distantly sucks in a breath, but it feels so loud, for what it really should be. Maybe that's because my own breath stops so quickly everything else becomes amplified, in the few seconds after she blatantly refuses to answer me.

Turning back towards where the explosion came from is not an idea.

It's a certainty.

"Celia, be careful," someone snaps. It could be any of them, all thinking and knowing the same thing, without even being told. They already know I'm turning around and headed that way, dreading what I'm going to find. It doesn't matter how much I don't really want to. Theo and Costa are far outside. Too far away to really hope. Someone else could be close enough to come and find me, help me if I need them too, but I'm not going to wait here for that happen.

I don't think I have any time to lose.

I see the site of the explosion from quite far away, off down one of the walls. There's smoke and dust everywhere in the air, spilling out into the hallways. The far wall is collapsed in on itself, the rubble piled up right where the doors connect to the main room.

I didn't plan on stopping, but my body just does, when I see the sight of it. The main foyer is completely trashed, what had to have been the second floor balcony above it completely gone, collapsed into pieces onto the floor below it. The rubble has to be several feet deep. Most of the floor underneath it is hardly visible, save for small sections of it. Even the stairs are completely gone - I can see where they were, though, some of the marble slabs still connected but fallen to the ground regardless.

And this is where they were. Where Ronan was leading them, to find the bomber.

Where Rory was.

"I saw them go under the stairs," Audrel explains. "Couldn't see them after that. She must've disabled the cameras on the balcony, because I didn't see her go down after them. I only had a view from the hall, when it—"

When it collapsed. When it collapsed on _top of them._

This isn't happening. There's no way this is really happening right now. But they're gone. There's no sign of Rory or Ronan, no sign of Sabille. Audrel didn't see any of them run off. If they didn't have time to run off, then there was nowhere else to go. They're underneath it all. They're trapped, buried alive.

Possibly dead, I can't help but think, as I go scrambling for where the stairs must have started. It's impossible not to trip. All the rubble is shifting underneath my feet, the plaster threatening to give away, and then I'll be next, stuck underneath waiting for someone to rescue me, if I was even conscious enough to do so. For all I know it's already too late, and unless I was here in the first place, I couldn't have stopped it.

I can feel the hysteria rising, as I start to move away some of the rubble. Pieces of marble and chunks of metal go sliding down the pile onto what little of the ground is left exposed. It's not that big of a space. I'll find them.

Or I'll find something. What I find might not be entirely a person, after this.

It's not long before I expose something, in the middle of the rubble. The edge of a boot, just poking out from underneath a slab of concrete, twisted awkwardly. I'm forcing myself not to lose it. I can't even focus on what someone's saying in the earpiece, no doubt trying to get some sort of update out of me. But it feels like I can't. All I can do is push the rubble out of the way, shoving and nearly collapsing under it's weight as it finally comes free.

It comes free, nearly coming back my way, and reveals Ronan's bloodied and broken face, unmoving.

There's no cause for any sort of alarm to overtake, because I know before I even crouch down, before I even reach a hand down, searching for his pulse, that he's already dead.

It still cripples me for an alarmingly long moment, where I can't seem to move at all. Just my fingers against the edge of his neck, waiting for a flutter that won't ever come. Staring down and waiting for him to get up, despite all the contradicting evidence. And if he's like this, right now, then there's no avoiding the other thought. The thought that the same thing's already happened to Rory.

That's when the urgency finally breaks through, and I turn around, quicker than I thought was possible on such unstable ground. Rory's here, somewhere, and he's not dead, he can't be dead, because if he's dead I'm not sure what I'll do.

I'm not sure if I'll get out of here. If I'll be capable of getting back to the others.

There's a renewed energy in me as I go back through the path I had walked, shoving things out of the way. Digging through, sometimes all the way to the floor. My hands are covered in dust, white up to my wrists. My skin snags and pulls against the broken edges of the collapsed ground, scratches opening up all along my palms, but I don't even feel the sting.

I don't feel much of anything, until I finally push aside a twisted off piece of metal, and a hand comes rolling free of the debris.

It doesn't take me longer than a second to realize that it's not a girl's hand. The skin is ripped open and still dripping blood rhythmically onto the floor below it. I want nothing more than to scream, because it feels like that's the only thing that will help. I push away even more of the broken ground, hardly letting myself believe it's him. But it has to be. There's no other person.

The second I see his face, I think nothing else, besides the fact that he must be dead.

He doesn't move. I suck in a breath that hurts and shakes.

"Rory," I try, pleading. I can hardly even reach him. I dig in deeper, trying to push away what's left of the rubble that's still surrounding him. I almost can't move it. I don't even know where the strength comes from, but it feels like it's more than I should be capable of.

My arms are shaking. My hands too. It might as well be all of me.

"Rory," I repeat, but I already know I'm not getting an answer. A minute later I have his shoulders and head free, including most of his torso, and that has to be good enough. His legs aren't crushed under anything. Part of his left hand was, and some of the fingers are jerked back at an awkward angle. I grab him under the arms and start to pull backwards, praying that my legs keep me up.

They do. At least until I back off the last of the rubble, still pulling him after me. Apparently after that my body just gives up, even though it's intact. I hit the ground with my legs folded underneath me, Rory completely limp up against my chest. I just need to breathe. I can handle this. I can, so long as I keep telling myself that.

It just doesn't _feel_ like I can.

"I'm gonna need some help over here," I manage. Okay, that's not great. It sounds like I'm about to burst into tears at any given second. I'm not about to deny it, either. I'm not a good liar, to myself or to others.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't— I don't fucking _know w_ hat's wrong, I just need _help."_

I really don't know what's wrong. I try to turn him, as gently as possible, so that he's half-draped over my lap, but nothing happens. His head is bleeding an alarming amount, but nothing I could do is going to stop it. If some of his fingers are broken, then I'm not counting some of his toes out either. His nose could be too, for all I know. There's too much blood to tell. His clothes seemed to have protected him from some of it, but that didn't do anything for his face.

Even when I fit a hand against the side of his neck I can hardly feel a pulse. It feels like I'm imagining it. It's so light, the weakest little flutter against the tips of my fingers. It could just be how bad I'm shaking. I could be holding a dead body right now, and I don't even know it. I don't think I'm going to be able to figure it out on my own.

"Okay, we're okay," I insist, even though I'm not convinced. I'm okay. He's not. I shift a little bit, trying to get my legs out from underneath me, and I can't tell if I'm seeing it, when he moves. Maybe it was just me moving, that small tilt of his head, the slightest exhale of breath from his lips.

"We're just figuring out who's closest," Audrel says. "Someone's coming soon."

Not soon enough. I shouldn't have been the first one here. This isn't good for me. I'm going to lose it.

The rubble shifts behind me, the small pattering of broken bits of rubble hitting the ground, and I turn my head.

Definitely going to lose it.

It's her. Sabille. She pushes herself free from a piece of concrete and then ends up on her hands and knees. She looks just as bad as Rory and Ronan both. Her eyes are dazed and unfocused, seeing right through me. But she knows I'm here, and she's trying, desperately. I don't know if she can stand up. I almost want her to. That would make it a lot more _satisfying_ , when I get up and go over there.

She swallows a few times, before any words come out, mixed with blood. "Wasn't my fault. He pressed the wrong button."

It's going to be satisfying either way, I decide.

I let go of Rory, gently, trying to lower him back to the ground as carefully as I can. Sabille doesn't move when I rise to my feet, not when I get just to the edge of the pile and yank a piece of broken rebar out, the first one I see. It would be unlike them, to see that coming and run. They're more likely to stay when they see it coming. They may be wild animals but they don't have the same preservation instincts that come with fleeing.

So she doesn't try to get up, doesn't move at all, in the second before the rebar comes swooping down towards her head.

It connects at the edge of her the cheek, the sickening sound of metal pushing in against flesh, and she collapses backwards. I don't care if that was enough to kill her or not. The next hit connects over her cheekbone, the harsh sound of a bone fracturing apart and veins rupturing underneath, a spurt of blood. It's not enough. She should be dealt worse than this, for acting like this wasn't on her, for acting like she didn't just almost rip my life halfway apart.

I hit her again. Something breaks apart and juts outward in her jaw. Her eyes are closed now, mouth filled with blood. When it next hits her in the temple her head lolls completely sideways and the blood spills out onto the floor, staining the marble.

I bring the bar back. I should keep going. There's something in me that wants to ruin her, until every single part of her is unrecognizable.

Because that's what she deserves. For doing this, for getting back up in the first place when they _can't._

"Celia."

My hand swings to a halt, nearly back at her head again. The bar goes limp. A voice. Quiet, broken, struggling to stay even and whole.

I look back, and Rory's somehow nearly on his side, eyes barely open, looking right at me. He lets his arm flop off his side and onto the ground in front of him, a sick sound of pain escaping him the second it hits the floor. But he's stretching, trying to reach out. He can't. He can hardly move, but he's trying, with his hand edging out for me, as much as he can.

"Rory," I choke out, and the cuts on his lips open up and bleed again when he tries to speak. I'm back on him almost instantly, tripping and fumbling over myself to get across the rubble and onto the ground next to him, and I watch him close his eyes the second I do.

"Don't," I snap. "Don't pass out, don't you dare."

"'m not," he slurs, but he sure sounds like he's about to any second now.

"Don't," I repeat, hoping it gets through. Something has to. "I'm just gonna - I'm gonna lift you back up, hold on."

I don't even know if that's a good idea. He's injured, and same as Rooke we shouldn't be moving them. But I can't just leave him bleeding on the ground until someone decides it's convenient for them to show up. I force an arm under him, trying to ignore the sound of pain he makes, and then cradle his head with the other hand until I can slide him up and over again, resting over my legs. He presses his face up against the front of my shirt, one of his arms trying to come up around my back, but I don't think he can manage it.

"You're okay," I insist, but it sounds no better than when he was unconscious. "Just tell me what's wrong."

I'm trying to figure it out. He's not moving the arm that he has rested over his torso, his shoulder tensed awkwardly. At least supporting his head I can try and press my fingers over the gash that's still bleeding right at the base of his skull.

He shakes his head. I don't know what that's really supposed to mean, but everything hurts. I don't think he can focus on any one thing, and I don't blame him.

"Ronan," he whispers, and only just manages to lift his head up to look at me when I find I can't figure out what to say. His face twists, head slumping back against my arm, eyes squeezed shut. I can feel the tears burning my own eyes, because this is _too much_ and I just need someone else here to deal with it, to pick up where I'm leaving off because I can't handle this on my own.

And I thought I could. That's the worst part. I always thought I could handle everything.

"We're gonna be okay," I console, but it's hard, when I can feel tears dripping down my own face, when it's all I can do to just keep him clutched against my chest, because if I do that at least I know he's here. At least I know I'm doing something.

He knows I'm crying, but I don't think he can lift his head up anymore. I rest my head against his temple and his hand clutches at my back.

Just trying to hold on.

That's all we've ever been trying to do.

* * *

 **Kelsea Faraday, 13 years, District Ten Female.**

* * *

Neither of them are answering.

There's nothing in me that's surprised.

Celia sounded _terrified_ and I don't even think she realized it. It was only two sentences, but they were the most hysterical I've ever heard her, and probably the most I ever will hear her. It sounded like her whole world has just fallen apart with her standing in the middle of what was left, and I can't imagine it's very far off. That doesn't help. Something's wrong. Really wrong. Probably _worse_ what Rooke is, right now, and he's pretty bad off.

Which is really easy to remember, with how often I'm reminded of it.

Dimara's gone up ahead, as she's been doing every few minutes, just in case. Scoping out what's around the next few corners before she dares to take us that way. It's for the best. The last thing we need is to be surprised when we really can't afford to drop Rooke where we're standing and fight back.

This time, though, Vance goes with her. There are several hallways jutting out from where this one ends up ahead, and I don't think Vance is particularly keen on getting separated from us any time soon, but he's still more than willing to check things out.

And that leaves me with Rooke, and a wall. I don't know which is keeping him more upright.

He's trying to make it easy for us, but if I let go of him right now he's probably slide right down the hall and onto the floor. He's leaning against it so much that there's no chance he'd be able to pull himself back up before he realized he was falling.

There's a lot to keep track of. I'm trying to make sure I'm not making anything else for Rooke, listening for any signs of what's happening with Celia, and attempting to keep one eye on Vance and one eye on Dimara, before one of them inevitably disappears.

It's not easy.

"What's wrong?" Rooke asks quietly.

"Nothing."

"You're making a face."

A bold statement for someone who I was so convinced hadn't opened their eyes in nearly five minutes. He's been relying on us to pull him in whatever direction works. I don't think he even cares where he ends up, as long as we've got him.

"I think something happened to Rory," I explain. "He was near the explosion. Celia's freaking out. It doesn't sound good."

Rooke lifts his head up from the wall for a second, and then leans his weight back onto me, trying to look down the hallway. I'm pretty sure he's not aware of just how many times Dimara has left. I don't think he remembers Vance going after her, this time.

"We should go look for them."

I can't deny that I want nothing more than go running in Celia's direction too, if that's really where something went wrong for Rory. But I don't have that option. Rooke needs us too, even if his turned to mush brain is really unwilling to admit it out-loud.

"Someone else will," I tell him. "Right now we're just worried about you."

"You can worry about more than one thing at a time."

"I'll have a breakdown if I try," I mutter. I'm sure I could manage to keep it together for now, at least, while I'm focused on Rooke, but not forever. If I start questioning every little thing it'll become too much for me to keep up with. For now I need to keep my head up, eyes forward. As long as everything's being dealt with then I can handle that.

"Celia?" I ask again, about to start pleading. I'm sure everyone is. That's probably the real reason why Vance went with Dimara - if he was doing something, if he was moving, that takes his attention off of this.

"We're gonna go, if no one else says they are," Nadir tells us, and I let out a sigh of relief. Having Nadir and Tanis both head that way will make me feel a lot better. All of us, probably. They're uninjured, and they can handle whatever they're walking into. I know they can.

"Better?" Rooke asks.

"Not yet. But Nadir and Tanis are gonna get over there as quick as they can."

"That's good," he says, and moves up against the wall. Even that little moment is enough to have him squeezing his eyes shut once again. Almost up to a minute, that time, without looking like he was in completely agony. That's almost progress, if I didn't feel terrible about it.

"What can I do?"

He shakes his head and forces himself still once again. I'm trying to keep him upright and also trying to hold onto him as lightly as I possibly can. No need to go at his ribs even more.

It's not like anyone can really do anything, for that. Some painkillers. But that still doesn't fix them. He'll be dealing with this for a while.

"You're okay," he forces out a few seconds later. "Just don't drop me, preferably."

"Wasn't going to."

I'd be dead if Vance hadn't spent several days carrying me around. There's no way I would've been there by the time day nine rolled around, if he hadn't decided on those few minutes of generosity. And Rooke would probably still be laying at the bottom of the stairwell, if we hadn't gone looking for him.

I'm more than used to this, by now.

I guess that's probably a good thing.

* * *

 **Dimara Vespoli, 18 years, District One Female.**

* * *

I don't tell anyone when I see someone.

It's pretty far off. Not enough to raise the alarm and terrify Rooke into coughing up one of his lungs, but definitely someone. They're off down the corridor and out in the space between two buildings. Moving carefully, sticking to the shadows. Slow enough that I get a good enough look to know that it's none of us.

Besides, it would be pretty hard to think that. Even far away you can tell that they don't move the way a perfectly normal person would and does.

It takes years to hold yourself like that, to move like that. Careers only get a taste of what that feels like, before they either die or win, and after that there's little reason to keep it up.

"Hey," Vance says, and I shush him before he's really even that close. I'm not risking this guy hearing anything, not a single word. He creeps up behind me, clearly trying to lean around me to get a better look.

"We're good every other way," he whispers. "No sign of anyone. We should be good to keep moving."

I nod, but continue to squint down the hallway, trying to figure out what the hell he's doing. He opens one of the first floor windows but only peers in for a second. He leaves it open when he backs up, too, and then looks to his left and disappears. We won't be able to see him unless we risk getting closer.

"Go back and get them, just in case," I tell Vance, and he jogs back up to the last corner and heads right, back to Kelsea and Rooke. Just because I think he's headed a certain way doesn't mean he won't double back and head this way instead. I don't need them alone if that really does happen.

It won't. Hopefully.

"Blair?"

"What's up?"

"You still in the east building?"

"Sure are."

"Think we saw your guy. He was outside. He just opened a window, but he left and went deeper into the complex, I think. No way to tell unless I want to go outside and ask him."

"That's probably not very smart," he surmises, like he's the pinnacle of smart decision making himself. "We'll keep our eye out."

"For the love of god, be careful."

"Careful is my _middle name_."

"I'm serious. If I have to find you laying somewhere in need of another limb cut off, I'm never speaking to you again."

"Harsh," he points out. "Please don't do that."

"Then listen to me. Think of it as you might be needed for Rory pick-up in the inevitable future once we find out what's going on there."

That's enough to shut him up, because for every single shred of bravado we have in our bodies, Blair included, it fades away pretty quickly in the face of things like this. We don't know how bad it is, and we're already dragging Rooke around. Chances are we'll be adding Rory to that list, because I don't think Celia would be so silent otherwise. If you really think I want to be dealing with Blair all over again on top of that, you're dead wrong.

I _never_ want to be dealing that again in my life. I have a feeling the first and hopefully only time is still going to be brought up when I'm ninety years old and probably still putting up with his antics.

"Have some faith in me, mom," he insists. "See you soon."

I sigh, and pull the earpiece out of my ear, a brief second of respite. "Hopefully."

Truthfully, I think Blair will be okay. Or at least alive, the next time I see him. I just really hope I don't drop dead before that moment, or anyone else. It certainly feels like that. Apparently stress really can kill a person.

At least my arm's stopped bleeding. It won't be that.

Vance comes back around the corner hauling Rooke with him not long after, and Kelsea rushes up to me before they even take a few steps. It's not that hard to out-pace them right now.

"He's gone?"

Thankfully. I still chance a last glance down the hallway just in case. One of them hit Rooke with a car; doubling back on us and shooting us all would be child's play compared to that. Clearly Kelsea thinks the same thing. She wouldn't be looking that way otherwise. Vance's attention is pretty much solely back on Rooke, and he already got his fill looking at something neither of us really want to deal with.

"Alright," I announce, and lift up Rooke's free arm to duck under it myself, draping it over my shoulders. I know stretching has to hurt his ribs more, but we also move faster than we would if it was only one person pulling him along.

"You good?" I ask him, and he manages to meet my eyes this time. Last time it took him what felt like an hour to even lift his head up.

I don't really think he's _good._ But right now I'll take him lying over the truth. There's no time for the truth to be dealt with.

"Awesome," he decides on after a moment.

"Awesome," I agree. Not the word I think any of us we're thinking of, but that's fine. Whatever someone's willing to say at this point is a word or sentence I'll accept.

"So where are we going?" Vance asks, adjusting Rooke's arm over his shoulder.

I look down the hall one last time. "Definitely not that way."

* * *

 **Meritt Trevall, 22 years, Formerly of District One.**

* * *

He can't catch more than one, fleeting glimpse of his sister before she disappears once again.

He's not the only that's a ghost.

She's doing it on purpose. It feels like that's all they did for years; disappear in and out of each other's lives, never staying for long.

But she knows he's alive. She was in the Capitol too, when they brought him back. They never saw each other. If he had known then that she had survived, he would've wondered why they never saw each other. Maybe it was for the best. If he had saw her, he doesn't doubt that things would've gotten worse for him.

He pulled the earpiece out long ago. He doesn't want anyone screaming at him, trying to tell him where to go and when to do it.

He dealt with that for too long.

Kane's never going to forgive him for this, but he can't really bring himself to care. He can't even begin to imagine what kind of atrocities Carnelia would lay on someone else if they tried to get involved. With him it's a game - with anyone else it's shoot to kill, no questions asked.

And no one else deserves that. It's only him.

Meritt can hardly remember a time before his tenth birthday, a time before the Sentinels existed in his life. That's everything he remembers. Carnelia still probably has shreds of everything before, of what her life was like. She had friends that would come over on the weekends and her alarm always woke him up in the morning and almost every day she would meet him outside his class and they'd walk home together and that was the life they had.

That was the life they should've continued to had.

It's his fault. All of it. He really believes that. Even if the initial action wasn't him, Carnelia took every hit in those early days to protect him.

She lost herself long before he did. And the second she backed away, they started in on him.

She should've just let them kill him. It would've been easier. Maybe if they had she wouldn't have been so keen to fight back, wouldn't have bothered surviving. Then they'd both be dead, and that would be better.

He wasn't scared, when he saw that flame come to life, when he realized death was imminent.

He was more scared when he woke up.

There it is again. That barest flash of what could be a human being, or what could be his sister. A shadow on the wall, disappearing.

The walk into the next room isn't very long, but he forces himself to take it slow. She's not venturing up the staircase in the middle of the room. There's any number of ways she could have gone. He stops at the bottom of the stairs, and doesn't move.

It's been a very long time since either of them made a noise.

Too long.

He turns around, and there she is. No different than he remembered her, gun pointed at his head and all.

The gun's the least surprising thing of all.

It's a wonder people never called them twins. She still looks much younger than what she really is, and he probably looks about ten years older, after everything. He definitely feels like it.

"Long time no see," he says, and watches her cross those ten feet between them, and doesn't move.

He runs, she shoots him. Probably, anyway. Maybe she's changed her tactic.

The barrel of the gun is an inch away from his head now. All the things that have been done to him, and it's a possibility she thinks a gun to the head is still worrying. He can't help but wonder if she doesn't know the true extent of it, or just what she was told. The good parts. The safe ones.

"Couldn't have just stayed dead?"

"Couldn't have just died yourself?"

None of this would be happening if they were both dead. He's pretty convinced. But she tilts her head at that, the shade of a smile on her face.

"Should have just died with mom and dad," she reminds him. He feels like she's said that before. Probably.

That's the truth, if nothing else is.

"Where are your friends?" she asks.

"Where are yours?"

"Dead, probably."

There's only one reason he should've left the earpiece in. He would know every single one of them that had died by now, and jr could throw it back at her. Tell her what happened, push her right to the edge like she's trying to do to him. Lucien is a leader in name, Carnelia is the one that really made them what they are.

She may not care about him, but somewhere deep down these people _mean_ something to her.

There's no denying it.

"It sounds like they've been falling pretty easy."

"You really think our goal here was to kill you?" she asks. "If we wanted to kill you, you'd all be dead. Your reckoning will come one day, little brother, and when it does you'll think back on this moment. We don't leave easily. Dead or alive you'll remember that."

"No one else around," he says, like it's an offer. "No one to stop you."

"No one to stop you either."

Like she cares. Like she'd really want him to go easy on her, when they both know she won't.

"Old times?" Carnelia asks, in the same second that he ducks, his arm swinging upward. His hand locks around the barrel and twists it away, pointed off above his head before he dares to rise back up. She practically moved with him, knew what he was going to do and allowed it. They still move the same.

"Old times," he agrees. She smiles.

Game on.

* * *

I didn't edit this chapter for a goddamn second. The laziness is real.

And happy one year to this story, while I'm at it. I'll admit I was tempted to get it all done and posted by this date but better to slow down the shitstorm, I think.

Until next time.


	55. Triple Threat

District Two; Esterwick Government Complex, northern quadrant.

* * *

 **Tanis Maes, 15 years, District Seven Female.**

* * *

It was a pretty easy agreement, between me and Nadir.

If even one person tried to tell us not to head for Celia and Rory without suggesting a better option, then we were choosing to ignore them. There's no point in waiting. We know it's bad. The degree of bad doesn't really matter; the sooner we get there, the sooner we can figure it out.

I'm not so sure I want to. But that's beside the point. It's not about me.

There's very little threat left, running through this building. Threats that aren't us, anyway. I think we've more than proven ourselves by this point. That doesn't mean I want to run into one of the few people left, but if we do, at least it won't come at me the way the first one did. Completely out of the blue, unwanted surprise. And at least I won't be alone. That's comforting too.

The sight of ruin is pretty obvious, some of the rubble spilling out into a side hallway. It looks like so little, compared to how loud the actual explosion was. And it would be very easy to pretend that that's the end of it. That what we can see is the true extent of what happened.

But it's not.

I'm not even sure what to look at first, when we round the corner. There's almost nothing left of the second floor, save for a few pieces of it that are still stubbornly clinging to the upper walls, and the very bottoms of some of the pillars, still locked into the ground. Everything else has all but crumbled into dust around the bloodied body lying not far away, and two lone silhouettes in the middle of the room.

Celia and Rory.

Mostly Celia. Back to us, hunched over, visibly shaking even from a distance. It's only a bit of Rory's legs I can see, sprawled out from one side of her, and the top of his head peeking out from under her arm.

"I'm gonna make sure she's dead," Nadir decides. "I'll be right there."

This is why there was that dread inside of me, why my legs tried to reject the path my brain was taking them on. Nadir leaves my side and heads for the body, but her eyes are still flicking back to Celia the whole while. Not on me, even as I start making my way over to her, as quickly as I physically can without tripping on something. It feels like something's been lit up inside me, forcing me there faster even though my brain's screaming at me not to. Who cares what my brain thinks - we all know it's usually trash, anyway.

She doesn't even hear me coming. I come around her left side and drop down in front of the both of them, trying not to look too intently, and Celia jumps a mile. Rory's eyes fly open, a pained, torn out gasping him the second my knees hit the ground. Regardless I still feel a great sigh of relief leave me, at the sight of his open eyes, in the middle of everything else.

"Shit, I'm sorry," she apologizes, voice thick. You know who's not about to point out the tears all over her face? This girl. "I didn't mean—"

"It's okay," Rory forces out, although it must be anything but okay. He looks like he got tied to the back of the car and then dragged behind it for several miles, a joke Rooke's probably not going to appreciate, after today.

"It's okay," I tell them. "I should have said something. Nadir's just over there, but no one else. Everything's fine."

"Is it?" Celia asks, doubt clear in her voice. Or maybe that's just the aftermath of the sobbing.

And I'm not sure how to answer that. Nadir's making her way over now but she's still not going to be here fast enough to save me, or to hear the question and give a halfway decent answer. There's probably nothing I could say right now to make this situation seem better, not to Celia, and definitely not to Rory.

I pull off my jacket instead, and get the knife out of my belt, which at least gives me something to do with my hands. Celia's still staring, but I devote my attention to taking the sleeve off where it meets the shoulder, ripping easily through the fabric. I fold up the discarded sleeve and help her slide it under the back of his head, where there's a healthy coat of blood all over her fingers.

"They should've given us medical supplies," Nadir grumbles. At least the bitch is dead, if her putting her gun away is any indication.

"Someone's not coming this way," Celia guesses.

"Not anytime soon. This place is unstable anyway, we need to move him. Are _you_ okay?"

Celia nods, something too frantically jerky about it, but lets out a deep breath when Nadir grabs onto her shoulder and squeezes for a long moment. This is Celia in one of the darkest moments she's ever had to experience - holding onto someone who could theoretically be just another corpse, if his eyes had remained closed, in the middle of a collapsed room with his blood all over her hands.

She uses those hands, or at least one of them, to scrub at her face for a second. "We should probably do something for his arm. I think it's broken - or at least _something_ is, I just don't know what. It would be better if it wasn't just dangling around."

Nadir takes the jacket out of my hands and starts fiddling with it. I'm having difficulty looking away from the blood that's already starting to seep into the makeshift bandage she's holding to the back of his head.

I lean in close. "How many brain cells do you think you lost today?"

"Lots," he mumbles, and Celia lets out a weak noise, but at least it doesn't look like she's about to burst into tears again.

"Guess you and Rooke will have to share a brain now."

"Rooke," he says slowly, remembering. "Is he alright?"

"Well, he's walking. Which is more than I can say about you. How are your legs doing?"

He cracks opens his eyes and strains to look down at them, like he can't even tell. "Fine. I think."

"Good, you're gonna need 'em," Nadir points out. She's managed to tie the remainder of my jacket together so that it looks like it'll hold around his neck and arm, at least for the time being, until someone can get an actual sling on him. Celia very carefully lifts head up until Nadir can slip it over, and then sets to very gently maneuvering his arm into the remainder of it. He still closes his eyes, teeth grinding together. I can only imagine, even if I don't want to.

"Alright?" Celia asks, and even though he turns his face back into the front of her shirt he gives her a very shaky thumbs up with his free arm. I can't tell if some of his fingers are broken or if they're just that bloody and mangled. I'm not sure if I even want to learn the difference.

This is bad. Probably even worse than Rooke. So that's one thing broken for sure, probably the first of many, and his head is absolutely toast.

The entire floor of a building landed on him.

He should probably be dead.

Nadir must realize it too, because she looks at all of us, in turn. "Really pushing the nine lives theory to its limits today."

One for each of us, apparently, instead of each of us having nine total. That would be easier, but I'm not sure we know how to do easy. We haven't even begun to move him more than a few inches.

The first bit is always the worst. That applies to more than one moment in my life. Practically everything.

So from here on out it should be easy, right?

Wrong.

* * *

 **Blair Carnell, 18 years, District Two Male.**

* * *

You think what Dimara said would make me feel better.

We know where Lucien is, vaguely. At least where he's last headed, and it's extremely close to where we are now. That confirms everything we believed we knew, about him not being far. It also means that literally any second could be my last, if I'm not careful.

We may know where he is, but he probably know where we are, too.

For the first time in my life I actually think I'm content to hang back and let someone else lead the way. It's hard to want to be in the lead, when every time you've done that it's ended so badly. Let someone else take charge and push through first. Besides, Luca seems more than content to do exactly that, even it means walking up the barrel of this guy's gun to do it.

You know, I say it. Actually hearing the crack of the gunshot is something else.

It echoes deafeningly in the confined space of the hall, the grand height of the ceiling and the several floors looking down at us doing nothing to muffle it. I see absolutely nothing, save for the faintest stagger of Luca's feet, and the panic doesn't even really have a chance to build, before Seren yells something and then shoves me towards the wall.

I just listen.

I wind up crowded up against the wall, nearly on the floor. Seren's on the other side of the room to my left, gun in one hand and the other arm apparently either stopping Luca from running off or from falling over, I'm not sure. He's bleeding from the shoulder, an already rapid wave of blood descending from both the front and the back where the fucking _bullet_ went through, and I didn't even see the guy.

Didn't see him at all.

Seren herds Luca towards the wall and then stands there, trying to check on him and me and also look for Lucien, all at the same time. It doesn't look like Luca's in any immediate danger - he looks more infuriated, than anything.

"Have I ever said," Luca starts, just loud enough that I can hear him. "How much I fucking hate him?"

I swear I almost hear something like a laugh, and even though my back is pressed up against the wall all the hair stands up on the back of my neck. He could be on this floor with us, in one of the doorways. He could be on any of the floors above. We don't know.

Luca hauls himself to his feet, one hand pressed to his bleeding shoulder, and that's about as much of a signal as I'm going to get, that I need to stand up. And probably be ready for something else that I'm not going to see coming. For the first time in what has to be entire life putting a mace in my hand doesn't feel anywhere near reassuring. The gun doesn't even feel like it's doing anything.

Seren catches my eye and nods off to somewhere I can't exactly see. I sidle up closer to the nearest pillar, but it's almost futile trying to see around it, unless I want to risk getting shot in the head.

Most of the room is sprawled out in front of me, but there's still one small section behind me, the way I ran in from. Even if he isn't right next to me, he could be really fast. If he decides to come that way and I don't notice he could shoot me in the back before I do much of anything at all. He probably is closer to me than them; why couldn't Seren have grabbed me, instead of shoving me off?

I crouch closer to the ground and quickly move from one pillar to the next, trying to listen. That has to be footsteps, but I can hardly tell where they're coming from. It almost sounds like the second floor.

Am I really willing to bet my life on something none of us can see?

It doesn't really matter.

This time I do hear something, no doubt about it. The creak of the floor right above me, as obvious as it could possibly be.

"Blair!" Seren shouts, a second before Lucien apparently decides throwing himself over the edge of the balcony is just something he's okay with.

He hits the ground, completely steady on his feet, about three feet away from me.

It's not great.

I don't think. I just run. If all of this is really true, then he'll catch up. He's faster than me, definitely bigger than me. Someone shoots, Seren or Luca or both, but nothing connects. Part of a pillar behind me shatters at the edge and pieces of the marble go spinning out onto the floor. I feel his hand nearly brush against my back, arm stretching out to stop me from getting any further, and then someone slams into him.

I force myself to slide to a halt, even though I have no desire to. Both Luca and Lucien hit the ground just behind me, tangled together. It doesn't take very long to realize what's going to happen. Luca's already injured, still bleeding. Lucien's absolutely fine.

Lack of intervention will result in someone dying, and I know which one of them it will be.

Lucien's elbow smashes so hard into his jaw Luca's head snaps back, blood spraying out of his mouth. He only manages to grab one of Lucien's guns, and of course he has more than that. It goes spinning across the floor, too far to reach, but Luca falls back in his attempt to get it as far away as possible. In that split second, Lucien's already free.

Seren gets there before I do, still moving back to them. He lunges across the floor at the sight of the gun, towards her instead of away, and the first bullet goes sailing over his head and nearly hits me in the legs.

Okay. So, that's not going to work.

She's a lot like me, but no years of holding a gun are ever going to compare to growing up with the weapons we did. It would do more if Lucien looked at all scared of the sword in her other hand. It misses his neck and slices across shoulder, instead. It feels a little bit like payback, but not enough.

He gets her around the legs next and she hits the ground with a harsh thud. I've got no choice but to basically dive on top of them.

It seemed like a better idea before I actually did it.

The second I hit his back he's trying to shake me off. My fingers clamp around yet another one of the guns and I yank it out of his belt. It doesn't get very far. He's still holding onto Seren with one arm, which is enough to spike panic on it's own, but he reaches back with the other and gets a hold of _me._

I don't see it, too focused on trying to get away from him, but Luca gets the gun that I toss away before it can get any further, finger on the trigger. I feel the recoil as it hits Lucien, presumably somewhere in the leg, but that doesn't seem to stop him. He literally _rips_ the sword out of Seren's hand, his palm torn open and then hers as she struggles to get it back, but it's no use.

He stabs down towards her with her own fucking sword, and it slices through the skin in the middle of her upper arm. The bloodflow is immediate, unnerving, and she rears back and away from him, but not before he smashes the handle of the sword into her face.

And I'm the one still holding onto him.

He must realize. He doesn't care. Luca's the one with the gun, the one that pulls the trigger again. He basically drags me after him as he turns back on Luca, even though I see the second bullet hit him, not far from the one that's already buried in his thigh.

It's Seren's weapon in his hand, Seren's sword, and Luca only gets halfway to his feet. My hands on him are doing nothing. Lucien lunges after him, the sudden movement nearly enough to knock me off of him, and then rips the sword across his side.

That's when Luca hits the ground. The blade, when Lucien brings it back, is shiny with blood.

Luca's on his knees, and Seren's behind us, handle of her remaining sword slippery when paired with her own blood.

He doesn't so much as turn around to look at me, the only one that isn't spattered with their own blood, as much as he slams me into the ground.

It's all around bad. His hands slam so hard into my chest it aches. I twist towards the ground, trying to bring at least one arm under myself, because if I go down to the ground with him on top of me that's bad, worse than _bad_ , but it doesn't work. He hits me again, so hard in the center of the face that my vision whites out. My arm hits the ground, outstretched, and he pushes down. Something _pops_ and numbness hits me from the shoulder to the elbow.

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now, about how fragile human arms are.

It's gone completely loose, weak. I still try to bring my other arm up, but he doesn't seem to notice, or care. Maybe that's just normal to him. My head smashes into the ground when he pushes against me the last foot, and another fist swings down towards my face, a sharp pain bursting outwards in my nose. I can hardly even see straight as is, and the blood dripping into my eyes only makes it worse.

That doesn't stop me from seeing Seren. Her sword collides with his back and he nearly collapses on top of me with a howl of pain, the first sign that he's really human at all, with all the injuries he already has. He keeps one arm twisting the metal arm back, away from him, and stabs out at her again. It's no higher than her knee, but clearly he hits something. I'm not sure how she stays on her feet. Now he's trying to figure out which one of us to actually cripple first, keep from getting up again.

His weight leaves my arm and chest, and I suck in a breath that makes my head spin dangerously fast. I can hear the clash of the swords, but my vision's spotty. I still force my arm underneath me, cradling the other one close against my side. It's burning, the edge of my shoulder on fire, déjà vu that's a little too terrifying to really help the situation at all.

Not far away, Luca staggers to his feet. I see him scoop one of Lucien's discarded guns up off the ground. Him and Seren are still too close, worryingly close, and a million scenarios try to run themselves through my head, about where that bullet will land if someone moves the wrong way, even for a second.

I don't so much as grab his legs as I awkwardly crash into them, wrap the metal arm around his knees, and then throw myself as much to the side as I can. The screech of the swords fades away. I don't know if I pull him away, or if Seren gets it. She still gets one last flash of the sword in, across his upper arm.

The gun goes off.

My face is nearly pressed to the floor, arm still hooked around his knees and stubbornly refusing to let go. I still see the spray of blood over my own head.

It's Luca's bullet, that finally hit him, nearly in the side of the neck. It tears a hole through the juncture of his shoulder, and whatever he had been about to say, or yell, comes out in a choked rush of air. He sways, and I let go of his legs, that force one of the only things holding him up. I try to back up, and the second I do my arm gives way underneath me.

I'm not seeing nearly enough. Luca's still standing there. Seren must cross over behind me, because a second later there's a set of hands dragging me back, and something clatters to the ground next to me. Her remaining sword.

Lucien takes a step forward, and then two, foot fumbling under his own weight, and then he crumples to the ground.

Everything goes so quiet, compared to the ringing in my head. Luca takes a few cautious, faltering footsteps forward, blood running through the fingers he has clamped to his side.

"Is he—"

Seren sags to the ground behind me, shaking her head at my words. I didn't think so. There's blood pooling underneath his neck and head, spreading beyond his shoulder. Too much to be survivable. But he's still clinging to whatever he has left.

Luca's nearly to him, now. He doesn't lower himself to the ground so much as he hits the ground the same way Seren did, adrenaline drained away, bloodloss hitting.

"Luca, be careful," Seren pleads. He's a foot away from where Lucien's lying, stretched out on his side, struggling to breathe. Even with no weapons there's something about him that's still terrifying, in his refusal to die.

People from Two seem to have that problem.

"What do you think would have happened?" Lucien asks, voice very faint. "If I hadn't nearly killed you when we first met?"

I'm not entirely sure I'm not hallucinating, but I swear Luca nearly smiles. "Probably be dying next to you right now."

"Shame."

The blood bubbling up from his throat is continuing to spread and seep away along the marble. I watch it spiral away through the cracks as Lucien tries to lift his head up. There's nothing left for him to do.

"It'll—," he starts, choking, lines of blood dribbling out from his mouth. "It'll happen one day. One day, you'll get what's coming to you, Arker. I don't know when. I don't know how. But it's coming."

Luca shuffles a bit closer, dangerously close, and pulls the gun back up. I can see it wavering towards Lucien's skull. "Looking forward to it."

Lucien is still looking around, dazedly, when he catches sight of the gun.

"Don't," he whispers. "Just— just let me go how I want to go. Give me that."

Nobody should give him that. Not after everything he's done. But I'm not about to be the person who intervenes in someone's life, whatever they had of it to even begin with. Luca lets the gun hit the ground, but in that silent moment when the two of them are nearly face to face, I think I get it. They've had so little decisions, in all of this. So little to call their own, so little they would've wanted to call their own.

This is the last thing Lucien's going to have.

No one said anything, or moved. Lucien chokes and coughs again and Seren's hand tightens along one of my arms. But the silence is long, unbroken save for the very faint, bubbling noises escaping him as he struggles to breathe, to keep himself alive.

I'm not sure when they stop. Luca stays there, right on the ground next to him, staring wordlessly. It's not until Lucien goes still that Luca lets out a breath, and then lets himself properly slump down onto the floor, head resting against his forearms.

"Luca," Seren worries, and he takes a moment to roll over onto his back, hand clutched over top of his chest.

"I'm okay," he assures. He's still bleeding quite a lot; I'm not sure _okay_ is the word he should be using. I know _I'm_ not okay. I can't even see straight.

But if he says he's okay, then I'll take that.

It means that we survived this. That one more's dead.

It means we're almost done, and the ringing in my ears sounds almost like music.

* * *

 **Rooke Arvelle, 16 years, District Nine Male.**

* * *

For the first time, I kind of regret not being able to hear anything.

Everyone else spends several minutes looking varying shades of concerned. That ratchets up my concern quite a bit, which is pretty impressive for someone who can't even really think straight, if I do say so myself.

"Who's dead?" I ask, slightly alarmed at my own sense of humor, right about now. Dimara gives me a disapproving look. I think. It's kind of hard to see her, tucked under one of my arms. I'm just sort of assuming.

We're right there, though. We could hear the gunshots, much too close. Not much else besides that, save for whatever they're clearly hearing through the earpieces, and what I'm completely oblivious to otherwise. There hasn't been anything in a while. No shots, that's for sure.

"I'm gonna go take a look," Dimara says. "Stay here."

She lets go of me and Kelsea steps in, even though Vance already has a pretty good hold on me. Dimara jogs very easily around the next corner and out of sight, but I can still sense the hesitance in her.

"Are we listening?" Kelsea asks.

Vance tugs on me just a little bit to get me walking in-between them again.

Guess that answers that.

I think Dimara would be more surprised if we did listen, at this point. I don't think it really matters, anyway. Getting myself moving again is hard enough as is, so following after her will take a minute or two. Just because she can run there at full speed, weapons drawn, doesn't mean I can. You'd think she hadn't been shot in the arm at all, for how little care she's showing towards it.

I'm only still moving at this pace because I just want confirmation, that the right person is dead. No one else.

It's not very easy to lift my head up, though. I'm exhausted, all of my limbs turned to absolute jelly, relying on the others to pull me around wherever they damn well please. It's a really weird thing to be grateful for, but not so weird when I consider where I'd be if no one had come looking for me. Definitely still lying there, maybe even unconscious. I'm kinda glad I don't have to know.

We round the second corner, where the hallway looks like it opens up into a wider room, and Kelsea squeezes my arm a little too tight. I can't even find the energy to protest it.

"Please tell me everyone's fine," I mumble, still unable to really look up.

"Relatively speaking," Vance replies. "Go ahead Kels, I've got him."

She doesn't need to be told twice before taking off. Vance wouldn't tell me that if it wasn't the truth, nor would he be walking be forward if the guy they were fighting wasn't dead. What use would I be, in the middle of that?

I force my head up, even if I don't want to. The amount of blood everywhere isn't great, but the biggest source seems to be flooding away from what is definitely the unfamiliar guy's body, a hole through the side of his neck. No one else looks great, but it's not as bad as it could be. Seren looks like she's more focused on stopping the bleeding from Luca's shoulder, even though she's bleeding herself. Dimara's crouched in front of Blair, who's alive even if he looks like someone just hit him in the head a few times. She's holding onto his arm, and twists and pushes at it just as Kelsea makes her way to them and crouches down by their side.

I'm not sure I even want to know what she just did, but a second later she gets go of his arm and Blair stretches it out, wincing.

Dimara glares back at us. "I really appreciate how much you guys listen."

"I think it's touching," Blair informs us, but winces again. Definitely hit in the head a few times. And the face. He looks up at Vance, and then me, still stretching out his arm.

"Wow, you look like shit," he continues, like I couldn't already tell. No matter what I look like, I definitely know I feel it.

"Says someone who is physically incapable of not getting their arms fucked up," Dimara points out. At least he's moving it around, even if it doesn't look like he's having the greatest time doing it. I think that can go for most of right now.

It's not really surprising, considering just how much of a tank this guy looks like. Or looked like. It's hard to think of him as scary, when he's lying dead only a few feet away.

Blair follows my gaze and stares for a moment too, before he returns to looking at Dimara. "Where's everyone else?"

"Not far. So much for you being on carrying duty."

"Nope, I can do it," he insists, and gets to his feet a hair too fast and nearly goes stumbling halfway across the room. Even dizzy I still think Blair carrying someone will go better than walking, especially if it is Rory. I think Vance would be carrying me right now, if that didn't hurt my ribs even more than walking does. Unfortunately, we found that out the hard way.

Dimara sighs. "Yeah, that's gonna go well."

Of course it won't. But when has anything?

* * *

 **Kane Alverado, 24 years, Formerly of District Two.**

* * *

To say he's freaking out is the understatement of the year.

He doesn't feel great, about leaving Nadir and Tanis to their own advices. He feels even less great about having spent all that time over there while Meritt was running loose looking for and probably getting demolished by his sister.

No one's expecting a big, loving family reunion.

In fact, Kane will be surprised to even find Meritt still alive.

That doesn't stop him from running. Doesn't stop him from asking Audrel to find him, and to do it fast. He lost him once. Getting him back was holding close to the knowledge that it could happen all over again, that he would have to go through it and try to live with himself once again for letting it happen. Because it was his fault. It always was.

"Audrel—"

"You don't think I'm trying?" she snaps. "The second I see them you'll know."

Them. Not him. Audrel's looking for both of them. They all know that's what's happening. Meritt wouldn't have given up until he found her, and there's only one reason he wouldn't be coming back to them right now. Because he can't. Because she did something so terrible to him that it's worse than death, something you can't recover from. Kane's seen her do it to other people.

He has no doubt that she'd do the same thing to her own brother.

"Kane, I can't really see," Audrel starts, but there's something optimistic in her tone. "Next left, go up the stairs and down the first hallway."

Ignoring that would be stupid. He opens the stairwell door and pulls the rifle off his back in one smooth motion. There's a time when he would have never considered lifting a finger against Carnelia, the first one being because she'd kick his ass the second he tried. But he doesn't care what he has to do now, if he still has the option to stop it.

"You should come to a balcony. I think—"

He doesn't hear what she says. He can see the balcony from here, and finds himself running faster. He manages to stop himself from tumbling over at the last second, the gun slamming into the railing and echoes around the room.

He looks down and sees them at the same time Carnelia looks up, finding him quicker than any other person would.

What he expects is never what he sees. Not exactly.

He's not sure where one of them ends and the other begins, both bleeding the same, her jaw torn open and dripping blood down onto Meritt's face. Any other time and they'd be moving the same, twins in every motion, but he's almost completely still under her hands, pressing so hard into his throat all the blood's drained out of his face.

Carnelia looks up at him, but Meritt doesn't.

Kane feels something in him go very cold, when he lifts the gun up.

He's not surprised to see the smile that graces her face, macabre, teeth full of blood. "You want him back, Kane?"

He forces himself to keep still even with a finger pressed up against the trigger, when she stumbles backwards onto her feet and pulls Meritt with her. Her hands leave his throat for one hopeful second, before she drags him back up against her and locks her entire arm around his throat. Kane's not even sure Meritt gets a breath in. If he's really breathing at all. He's still hardly moving, legs almost completely limp underneath him, hands not even trying to force her off.

"What are you gonna do, Kane?" she yells. "What have you ever done?"

Nothing. He's reminded of that a terrible amount.

"Don't worry," she continues. "Not like he's got a fucking pulse to begin with. Funny how that works. Did he tell you what the doctors in the Capitol did to bring him back, or did he spare you the grisly details?"

Meritt doesn't even know the details. She's trying to get into his head. Trying to stop him from focusing on the real issue, and her arm tightens around his throat even further and he can see the visible struggle in him, the fight to stay conscious when he hardly has any air left. If Kane doesn't do something soon, she'll kill him. She won't have any issues with it.

And he's angry.

Certainly angry enough to do what he's contemplating, no matter how foolish it sounds.

"Audrel," he says slowly. "Below the knee, either side of the bone. Little damage from a bullet?"

"Pretty sure you need to be causing a lot of damage."

"Just tell me that's right."

"I'm not Mac. I'm not a doctor."

So he's doing this on his own. This is his decision, his knowledge, everything riding on him to actually do this right. Any way he aims, Carnelia doesn't get hurt. Meritt's between them. He's her shield, until she either kills him or decides she's done playing Games and tries to kill Kane. Either way he loses this, or he gets Meritt killed, and he can't.

Not again.

"Fuck," he hisses, lowers the gun, and pulls the trigger.

It's like watching dominoes fall. The angle, the trajectory, the speed - he sees the bullet hit Meritt in the leg, several inches below the knee, and then rip right out from the other side and into Carnelia's. He watches Meritt crumple to the ground but the same thing happens to her, arm coming loose from around his neck as she falls backwards, and that's all he needs.

Meritt doesn't even move at the next gunshot, but Kane's not going to miss. This one hits Carnelia in the shoulder before she can move an inch to defend herself, and he puts one into the concrete between the two of them when her hand even twitches back in his direction.

"Next one's going in your head," he informs her. Taunting aside she knows his aim is true, knows that if he really means it he'll hit her dead on without any effort behind it.

All is sees is her stand up, slowly, both hands raised. The bullets only affected her for a second before she went back to ignoring them, same as always. There's very little about her that's changed, since he last saw her. Five years and not a shred of difference. If only he felt the same way.

"Take care of him for me, will you?" she requests. "Someone's got to."

For the first time in his life, he feels the itch burn behind his finger, wants to pull the trigger. He wants to watch it rip through her brain and out the back of her skull.

He doesn't, but clearly she waits. There's a second of delay before she moves backwards, like she wants to see what he'll really do. Or maybe she already knows.

That goes for most things.

She disappears down the back hall like she was never there to begin with, and he moves down the balcony, trying desperately to see her for as long as he can. He practically trips down the stairs in his haste to get to the bottom, pointing the rifle down the hall almost like he wants her to come back. A part of him still does, just to see her get what she really deserves.

"Meritt?" he calls back, voice suddenly nervous even though he hasn't yet turned.

"I'm watching the hall," Audrel says. "Go get him."

He still walks most of the way backwards, gun half-raised, and only finally slings it back over his shoulder when he nearly trips over one of Meritt's legs. Right one bleeding from the calf onto the ground below.

He's almost terrified to even touch him. No pulse to tell Kane if he's alive or dead. No anything, really, and he's pretty sure if anyone else stumbled in on him like this they'd assume he was dead without even bothering to check. Kane still grabs him by the shoulders and turns him over. His breath is coming in scratchy, wheezing inhales, his eyes hardly open. He's still struggling, trying to bring himself fully back.

"Look at me," he insists, and cups Meritt's jaw in both hands, watches his eyes close in apparent instant refusal. "Just focus on breathing."

"She—"

He breaks off, nearly choking again, after just one word.

"Don't try to talk. _Breathe._ "

It looks like one of the hardest things Meritt's ever tried to actively focus on. Maybe his body will just always be trying to fight whatever life is in it and try to drive it back out like it doesn't have a home in his lungs. Kane wants to do a lot of things. Wants to chase after Carnelia. Wants to yell at him and take him by the shoulders and shake him until he gets that he can't try and get himself killed any time he wants.

He doesn't. He sits there and he holds onto him until Meritt looks at him properly, eyes a little unfocused, swallowing thickly.

"You—," he tries, voice hardly more than a rasp. "You fucking shot me in the leg."

Kane really is all too familiar with the feeling of hysteria. He does finally cave into the urge to grab him, then, but hauls him up against his chest. Meritt doesn't do much more than slump there, head resting weakly against his shoulder. Kane wraps his arms tightly around him, to the point where it definitely isn't helping Meritt's breathing issues any, but he's not sure his brain really understands the difference between what would help, and what he just needs to do right now.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and Meritt's arms come up around his back to squeeze for just a second, before he can do nothing more than just keep his arms there, weakened.

He is sorry. For a lot of things. For shooting his sister, for starters, and shooting him.

But he's not sorry for saving his life.

It's about time he started doing that.

* * *

 **Luca Arker, 28 years, Formerly of District Six.**

* * *

Everything is passing by in a very large, too fast blur.

That's the bloodloss doing that to him. Definitely felt that before, like the familiarity of an old blanket being draped over his shoulders, come back to him once again.

Seren forces his hand over his side, clamping down on the deep, jagged wound across his ribs, and focuses on his shoulder. She's bleeding, but not as badly as he is. Dimara's got Blair up on his feet, even unsteady as he is.

"We gotta find the last one," he maintains, even though he's already said that twice, with varying results on her end. This time she just gives him a look, which probably means he'll have to accept sitting here a minute longer while she at least tries to stop the vast majority of him from bleeding all over the floor.

It hurts like hell, and the pain's making it a little hard to focus. Now that it's properly over, now that he has Lucien's dead body lying there in front of him, everything else has faded away. There's no urgency left, no will to get back up and move, even though he knows he has to. The kids are all back on their feet and he's just sitting here on the floor, only half because Seren's keeping him here.

"Where's everyone else?"

"Kane's on his way," she tells him. "He's got Meritt. Alessia too. Hollis is still outside with Emori and Karsi, and Audrel, Linnet and Orick are still in the control room, unless you want them up here."

"What about Fen?"

"The Eights brought him to the front. Mac has him; he's managing."

There's a little flurry commotion, from the main entrance hallway, and even though he's seeing a little double he still makes out the arrival of the missing four. Apparently he's got no room to complain about anything, ever again, with how bad Rory looks. He was about to say the same thing about Rooke, but those are two very different levels.

Seren turns to watch them, too, varying levels of concern in her eyes.

"Go check on them. I'm fine."

He thinks he will be. He's had far worse than this. It's just the sudden fatigue that just now hit him, that's new. Or maybe it's just looking at Lucien and wondering how little of a change it really would have taken, for that to be him dead on the floor instead. Their situations could have easily been reversed. They were already soldiers fighting in the same war, they just chose opposite sides. Forced into them.

Seren makes her way over, still that feeling of responsibility towards them inside her, and he slides a bit closer to the wall. He does keep his hand where it is, as instructed, but uses the other to brace against the wall, very slowly pushing himself up into a standing position. Better to do it when she's not telling him to sit still. And when she's not looking at all. He takes a minute to look everything over, forcing the dizziness away.

"Don't think you're supposed to be standing," Alessia says from behind him, and then slips under his arm. She's there and easing some of his weight off his own feet before he even really registers her presence, Kane just behind him. He's got Meritt on his back, a very dark line of bruising already forming around the circle of his throat, right leg still bleeding.

He stares, completely unable to comprehend for a very long minute.

"Don't ask," Kane settles on eventually. "Just tell me where to go and I'll kill the last one if I have to, I just want to go home."

That's a universal thing.

"Downstairs, Audrel said," Alessia says. "If they're up here, she hasn't seen them, and neither has anyone else. There's one more floor below where they are - she said there's an old control room, not far from here. If they're anywhere it's probably there."

Great. Just find him some stairs and get him down there. Like Kane said, he'll do really anything at this point.

"Thanks for sitting," Seren says, eyes exasperated, but she moves his arm and joins up at his side the same way Alessia did. At least she's used to it, even if she still complains. He has no idea how Alessia manages them all when they act like this.

Rory is on Blair's back now, which is no doubt asking for trouble, but it'll make it easier for them to move. Which probably means—

"Are they coming with us?"

"You think I could get them to stay up here?" Seren asks. "Fat chance. It's like talking to a brick wall."

"Huh, now you guys know how I feel," Alessia fires back, and then nudges him gently to get him walking. "Stairs. C'mon."

At this point they probably need the numbers, to kill whoever this is as quickly as possible. Luca's really not about to complain, when he's unsure about it's going to go. Most of them look better than he does, but that's what throwing yourself at Lucien gets you. Luca will just consider himself lucky that they all survived, regardless of the state they're in.

He probably wouldn't be able to make it down the stairs without help anyway. This would go so much more terribly, if he was on his own.

He kinda felt like he was on his own, so many years ago.

It's a relief not to have to feel that anymore.

Alessia lets go of him at the bottom of the stairs to open the door, stepping out into the darkened hallway to take a look around. He follows as quietly as he can, Seren's arm looped around his side.

It looks like a forgotten about place. Half the lights are out, some still embedded and flickering in the ceiling, casting harsh light across all their faces in random patches.

"Stay close together," he murmurs. Not that there's much space to wander through. This hall only stretches for so long before it abruptly ends, and it appears there's only one other that extends before them, ending in a wide door at the far wall. That has to be it. But they're on their own now, effectively cut off from everything above ground. Audrel can't tell them what's beyond that door, or who.

They still check the few other doors first, though. Alessia opens the nearest one and it's filled with old furniture, draped in sheets, dust billowing out into the hallway. Nadir crosses the hall and opens another that's almost completely empty.

It makes the door they're all staring at that much more ominous.

"Let's just get it over with," Blair says. Someone will have to congratulate Rory later, for managing to stay awake for all of this even with his head on Blair's shoulder.

"Take it easy," Seren replies. She looks up at him, and he nods. She waits until he's steady to let go and takes careful, quiet steps to the only door that's still closed, at this point. Both swords back in her hands now, even if that's his blood on them. Hers too.

Their blood is everywhere in this place.

He makes everyone walk as quietly as they can when Seren presses herself up against the door, straining to hear anything. There's no doubt about it - if someone is behind there, they've heard everything. But they haven't made any effort to stop it. That makes it all the more confusing, about what kind of replacement would care so little, about saving what they have left.

She looks back at him, eyebrows raised, and puts her hand against the door.

One second to open, and that's it. He pulls the gun back out, can hear the sound of everyone else doing the same. Preparing themselves in whatever way they can, for what they're about to see.

Seren takes a deep breath, and pushes the door in.

Luca said they were doing everything to prepare themselves. To come to terms with any number of things, so what they saw on the other side wasn't surprising. It was just something to be expected, one last obstacle before they were home free and this was all over.

But that's not how it goes. The door swings open, and Luca finds himself coming to a dead stop a hair away from the door, suddenly unable to move.

Because there's nothing he could have done.

Not a single thing in the world, that could have prepared him for this.

* * *

[oh y'all wanted a twist?]

Until next time.


	56. The Final Piece

District Two; Esterwick Government Complex, southern quadrant.

* * *

 **Vance Derora, 16 years, District Eight Male.**

* * *

It's funny, because I don't remember getting hit in the head.

But no other explanation exists, save me for hallucinating all of this, so I guess I did.

I'm nowhere near as brutalized as Rory or Rooke, but even they both look like they've been woken up from a too deep, too long sleep. Kelsea takes half a step back directly into me and I grab her by the shoulder. I'm not sure why. To stop her, maybe. If she runs then there's nothing stopping me from running too, and pretending this just didn't happen.

I'm not the only one that looks like they want to turn tail. It's a solid half. The other half has varying amounts of murder very slowly bleeding into their eyes. And there's an overwhelming sliver of awkwardness, shoved in the middle of all of this.

Awkwardness that comes from being in the room with someone who looks an awful lot like Ferrox Mervaine did, before someone else in the room shot him in the head five years ago.

God, I'm not imagining this, am I?

"What the fuck," Blair says, echoed a second later by Celia, and someone else just behind me. I'm way too close to the front of this pack for my liking. Luca's a foot ahead of me, frozen in what looks to be honest, genuine shock, and Seren pretty much looks the same. At least it's a universal thing. No one seems to be doing much of anything, except for staring. Staring at someone who's supposed to be _dead_ , even though what I'm staring at is a living, breathing human being sitting in a chair twenty odd feet away from us, staring right back.

"Not gonna lie," he says calmly, and the sound of the voice actually makes me flinch. "I was expecting something more—"

The sound of his voice doesn't just do something to me. Luca's already pulled himself away from Seren, in the few seconds that I'm unable to tear my eyes away, earnestly trying to make sense of what I'm seeing. I don't know if this is better or worse than Meritt walking up, but he also looks confused, as much as he's trying to hide it, and that in itself is scary. What do you do, when one dead person is alarmed at the sight of another?

Ferrox doesn't get a chance to finish the sentence before Luca drags him up and out of the chair and slams him into the nearest wall. An impressive feat for someone who's bleeding so much.

"Yep," he chokes out, a hand locked around his throat. "That's more what I was expecting. Still haven't worked on the anger issues I see."

"Shut the fuck up," Luca snarls, and okay, yeah, not a great situation. I should've let Kelsea run.

"You gotta let me talk," he insists, answered with a hand squeezing tighter around his throat, cutting off whatever else he was about to say. I don't think Luca's about to let him do anything, and nobody else is moving. Nobody else is saying a goddamn thing. What the hell could I possibly say?

"I want to go to sleep," Rooke mutters, clutching at my back. At least I'm not alone in that. Go to sleep and wake up tomorrow morning pretending that this was all some sort of ridiculous fever dream. That would be easier than confronting reality, and what's inside it. We've proven over and over again that the impossible just seemingly exists now, in a place where it shouldn't.

Alive or not, Ferrox Mervaine may very well be edging closer to death for a second time, with Luca's hand around his throat.

Seren has to visibly shake herself to step forward, eyes widening with every step she takes closer to them. Her hands don't even seem to do anything to Luca, but she waits a long moment before she pulls him back, closer to us. Ferrox is released with a great wheeze of breath, nearly falling to the ground before he catches himself on the edge of a table, holding a hand out between him and Luca.

"Easy," he tries, which isn't the word I would use towards someone who had already shot me once.

"Start talking," Luca snaps. "Or so help me God I'll shoot you in the fucking head again—"

"You're a shitty shot," Ferrox insists. "You may want to try something else."

He lunges to the side when Luca reaches for him again, a second before Seren manages to reel him back.

"Explain," Seren suggests. "Because I'm not saving you if you don't."

"Did you not hear it clearly enough the first time?" Ferrox asks. "He's a _shitty shot_. You'd think with all that training they'd teach you to check that someone was dead before you went running off, but clearly not. I was alive when you left me. Woke up two months later in a hospital. How's that for an explanation?"

"That really didn't explain anything," Dimara mutters. I think all of us share that particular sentiment.

But Ferrox looks at all of us now. There's no ounce of surprise in his eyes, taking us all in. Not for Meritt, not for the nine of us us, not anything. It's like he knew everything, was a part of all of it—

And he was, wasn't he? Things are very slowly starting to slot into place, where pieces had been missing before.

Ferrox backs up even further, until his legs are nudging against the chair that he had been sitting in previous. The old control room is entirely lit up, all the cameras operational. He was watching us this whole time, hiding down here, waiting for the moment where we'd open the door. He knew everything.

"They were afraid," Ferrox starts. "That you'd come back, if you found out I was alive. That you'd kill more people, and try again with me. _Dominika_ willingly kept me underground in the hopes that she could fix things. Hunt you down, or figure something out. Little did I know she had more plans than I knew. When she brought the Titans to the Capitol she never planned on one of them dying. Why do you think she had _him_ brought back?"

God, I wish that Meritt would look more bothered about all of this. It would do wonders to make me feel better.

"Everyone involved knew it wouldn't work. So that left Dominika with what she thought was two options: either I sit underground and rot, until she figures something out, or I—"

"Willingly become one of them," Seren fills in. "Of all the options?"

"You'd do the same thing, if that was how little of your life you had left. Doing that gave me something. I knew everything they were doing, gained their trust so that every whisper was something I heard. I gained enough of their trust that I convinced them to do nothing about the rebellion, when we started plotting it. Carnelia wanted to kill Quinn and come to Two. I let her. Because I knew exactly what would happen to them, if they came here."

"And what's going to happen to you?" Meritt finally asks, voice rough. The bruises around his throat are almost lost in the shadows, but not enough to forget they're there. Half this room is a walking, talking mess.

"What's going to happen to _me_?" Ferrox repeats. "The person who willingly got in with the Titans to secure the government's security, overthrew the government, and then let all of you kill them to end the war? I almost got myself killed trying to pull off what I'll say was the greatest triple-cross of all time. If you want to kill me after that, fucking go ahead. If not, I'm leaving."

Leaving and doing what, I want to ask, but I find I can't even open my mouth. I can't help but remember the Gamemakers, and Cambria, who came here when not a single person told them to. Who are still out there waiting.

"They knew," I force out, even though my voice doesn't sound like myself. "Cambria, and the others. That's why they're here."

I never wanted to have Ferrox Mervaine looking at me directly. I never really thought I'd have to.

"I've been stuck with a group of mongrels long enough," he says. "They were kind enough to save me from you."

"She fucking planned all of this," Luca snaps once again. "She created the arena, and she was the one who made the President give Meritt back to us, and she's tried every single year since the 155th, and she doesn't tell us any of this? She just lets us walk into this blind?"

Ferrox shrugs. He looks very nonchalant. "I helped, if that makes it any better."

Luca looks like he doesn't know what to do, exactly. Shoot Ferrox in the head, or himself. Both, if this conversation continues the way it's going. This is not the Ferrox we last saw on television five years ago, the one who had a funeral broadcasted all across the country, closed-casket, because he was never there to begin with. He was comatose in an underground hospital, and working, trying to figure all of this out, putting himself in a place where he thought he could fit.

Just like all of us.

"Would you have believed her?" Ferrox asks. "If she had told you, would you have believed her?"

We already all know the answer to that.

Ferrox glances over the room again, takes everyone in. Definitely not the same person. He takes a step forward, eyes focused on the ground, and Luca's hand locks around his arm. Seren doesn't try to stop him. Ferrox almost looks irritated for a moment, before he raises his head to look Luca in the eye. I don't even think I'm capable of that.

"What are you going to do, Arker?" he wonders. "Shoot me?"

"You remember what that was like, do you?"

"I'm not scared of you like I was five years ago," Ferrox states. "But nice try."

Coming from anyone else it would be a lie. But I know just by looking at him that he's not. He's looking Luca in the eye right now without a care in the world, completely unflinching. Maybe that's a testimony to the people he's spent the past five years around. Maybe that's a testament to the hole he got in his skull, for being scared.

This time, Seren doesn't have to reach forward. It's a very long, awkward minute, where I fully expect Luca to do something. Even injured he could kill him, and has all of us behind him. It's all about what he does.

He lets go of Ferrox's arm, his own falling to his side.

Ferrox straightens, and then after another second, smiles. He pats Luca on the arm, a dangerously close move, and then skirts around him and moves right towards us. I've never seen all of us scatter that quickly, but we all move out of the doorway without a single word spoken, and his smile only intensifies. He may not be scared of Luca, but we're all scared of him. We part like the sea, him between us, and he opens the door with a flourish and starts down the hallway.

The door slams shut.

None of us move.

"Did you find them?" Audrel asks. Tanis sighs. Rory blinks a little at the closed door, and then lets his face fall back into Blair's shoulder.

"Oh, we found them, alright," Alessia says, and then scrubs a hand over her forehead, looking exasperated.

Luca's staring very vacantly at the spot where Ferrox had been standing nearly the entire time. Seren grabs his arm and then presses her other hand over the still-bleeding wound in his side, which seems to flare some bit of life back in his eyes. It still doesn't move him, though. It's like someone's frozen him where he stands.

I don't even see Meritt turn around to leave. Hell, I don't even see him drop down from Kane's back in the first place.

"Where are you— oh, jesus," Kane mutters, before he shoulders the rifle and quickly moves after Meritt, who appears to have already moved halfway down the hallway in the half a second I've been contemplating what the hell we're supposed to do now. Going after him, I'd imagine, but I don't know what good that's going to do now. It's not going to fix anything for me personally.

This was all planned. Every single second of it. We knew about the Games, but everything after...

This was their everything.

And what do we do, now that it's supposedly over?

* * *

 **Rory Mirevale, 17 years, District Four Male.**

* * *

It's hard enough to even keep my eyes open the whole time it's transpiring.

After that, I'm done for.

I don't think Blair's intentionally jostling me every minute or so to keep me awake. I'm pretty sure he's just occasionally stumbling, blinking for a long moment before someone reaches over to steady the both of us. That's basically the only thing keeping me conscious, because I'm growing more concerned that if I end up on the floor because Blair himself falls over, that I'm never getting up.

It was hard enough the first time.

"Okay, let's go," Alessia orders. "Medical attention is _upstairs._ You too, Luca."

I can't imagine that's going over well, but I can't be bothered to look.

"So we're just going to let him go?" Dimara asks. I won't lie, that's kinda the option I'm hoping for. At least if someone does go after him, I'd prefer they drop me somewhere else. It's taking an insane amount of focus to not let myself pass out, occasionally paired with Celia reaching up to ask me herself. But even that's getting harder to respond to.

"Meritt and Kane will catch up to him."

Catch up to him and do what, I want to ask, but I don't think Alessia even knows, so there's no point in wasting my energy on it. There's the sound of the door opening again, and someone walking around us.

"Okay, moving again," Blair informs me, but I feel like I remember it hurting more, when we first started walking around. Good thing to know, that I'm probably just going numb all over. I think it's my arm that hurts the worst, because there's really no good way to position it while I'm on his back. That, or my skull. It feels like someone's driven a hammer into it and left it there.

I can hear everyone around me, talking, now that most of the shock has worn off. It's probably Celia that reaches up and squeezes my mostly good arm, for the tenth time.

The stairs manage to hurt a bit more than flat ground, but it feels like we start up them and it takes us one second to get up back.

"Please let me know if you're about to drop him," Nadir says, and I squeeze my eyes shut even further.

"I'm not," Blair insists, and then promptly stumbles again. I think we might be upstairs again. It's hard to tell, when you're not looking and even if you did nothing would come clear anyway.

I'd like to think that I could walk, but I didn't even really walk here in the first place. That was a combination of me mostly getting dragged, struggling to get my feet under me nearly the whole time. It's a good thing Celia, Nadir and Tanis were all intact, relatively speaking, because I don't think I'd have gotten this far if they hadn't been able to pull me.

Despite all the wobbles, Blair is managing to keep us both from ending up on the ground. It's a relief, to not have to worry about anything, even if it's just for a few minutes. Or however long it takes, until I finally feel like a human being again. I know that time's not right now. I'm not walking, not really listening, hardly unable to register who's checking on me.

Someone must open another door, because Blair ducks a second later and a wave of cool, fresh air washes over us. Outside, I would reckon, judging by the brightness even against my closed eyelids.

"Jesus christ," Blair mutters. About something concerning, I'm sure. I manage to crack my eyes open, turning my face out of his shoulder. It's a lot to take in. Most of the fire has died down, but the smoke is still thick and gray in the sky above. And it's not just the front of the building. It's beyond that too, extending into the District, like the pilot didn't care who or what he caught in the crossfire. He probably didn't. It's not just us that got hurt through this, us and the victors. There are civilians out there, people I hardly recognize. Ten times more than I can even count.

"Mac!" Alessia shouts, but I can't tell where she's looking. He's probably too far off for me to see. "C'mon, guys."

I'm sure it'll make more sense eventually, but for now I focus on Blair's footsteps, and the blurry ground underneath. I guess metal arms really are good for something, because I can feel him struggling with the other. I probably shouldn't be putting him through this.

There's another burst of conversation, much too fast for me to follow. Blair eventually halts, the others stopping around us. Someone's still talking, but it feels like they've been going on for a while. The second half of a conversation won't do much for me, if I didn't hear the first. I'm sure everyone else is listening, at least partially. Hopefully they'll fill me in.

There are the sounds of a car, too, steadily growing louder before the sound dies altogether, what I'm sure is just to our left.

There's no real warning before Blair starts to put me down, which is probably for the best. All of the pain reignites when I begin to slip off his back, as gentle as everyone's trying to be, him included. My arm still feels like it's being broken all over again, because I'm almost completely sure it is. Even when I'm finally sitting down on something, whatever it may be, it doesn't really stop.

"Hey," Celia says, a second before she puts a hand on the side of my face. "Look at me, just for a second."

I open my eyes again, unaware of when I had last closed them. I'm definitely sitting in the open back of a truck, and they've forced Rooke up after me, who looks like he had just as much fun as I did with it. Tanis clambers up after him, just enough to get him sitting by my side, and then jumps back out.

"Did you hear anything they said?" she asks, and I shake my head. Wrong move.

"Didn't think so. Hospital's on the other side of the District. Mac's gonna take you guys to a clinic not far from here - that's where they've been taking everyone, so far. It's probably a bit of a mess. If you have determination for anything right now, just try and stay together."

I nod, but I can't help but think about the fact that Rooke's the only one here. Everyone else is still standing just outside looking in, clearly all very concerned. It wouldn't take a detective to figure that one out. I'm not sure I want to know what I look like. Rooke looks pretty bad, and if I'm worse than him, than I probably look very far away from a viable human being right now.

"We're good," Celia insists, clearly noticing. "We'll be there as soon as they have a car to spare. They need all the space they can get right now, for people that are actually in danger."

"Is that what I'm in?" I ask blearily. It kinda feels like someone just kicked me awake, but I can't find the urgency or the worry that would come with it.

She shakes her head. "You're fine. Don't worry. You'll both be fine."

I am fine is drastically different from the possibility that I will be, but I don't even think she cares about the difference right now, and I don't care enough to call her out on it. A clinic sounds great, right now. Not being awake sounds even better.

"Can you get a hold of my mom?" I mumble. I think me trying that right now wouldn't end well. I don't need a scolding. It's not like I would be able to absorb any of it anyway.

"Yeah, I will," Celia says softly, before she sighs. "Alright, you can close your eyes now."

Don't need to tell me twice. She leans in and kisses me on the temple, which I'm pretty sure is one of the only parts of my face able to be interfered with at the current moment. She slams the back hatch shut and steps back, closer to the others.

"I'd whistle, if my face didn't hurt," Blair says, and I wait for the sound of her hitting him. It never comes.

Hearing the car start and then the movement of it underneath is almost a relief. Pretty soon I will just be able to let myself go, and I won't have to worry about any of this, or anyone else. It feels like that's all I've done, since I woke up this morning. Even if I can't see it I can tell that there's reluctance, for anyone else to let the car go with just the two of us in it and not everyone else. _Especially_ in the state we're in. That's not how we do things, after everything we've been through.

"I told my brother that you guys would protect me," Rooke says, after what has to be a few minutes. The car isn't moving that fast.

I turn my head to look at him. Halfway, anyway. I'm not getting much further than that, with how sore my neck is.

"Shit," is all I can say. The only word I can really think of.

"Yeah, Rooke sighs. "Shit."

Sorry wouldn't cut it. And he knows I'm sorry. Not just about this. I raise my arm up as far as I can get it, and maybe the lack of hesitance on his part is the injuries, or the blood-loss, but it doesn't seem like that. He slips under my arm and slumps against my side, head against my shoulder. Ignoring the fact that I can't tell who it's hurting worse, it's not that bad.

Leaning on someone tends to make things easier.

Right now is no exception.

* * *

 **Nadir Kuenzli, 17 years, District Twelve Female.**

* * *

The way we all stand there, until the truck is out of sight, you'd have thought it was a hearse.

Not a good joke, at this moment in time. I'm aware.

But that's what it feels like. The truck drives off, leaving the seven of us standing here. At least we are standing, though. I couldn't say the same for Rory or Rooke, who probably won't even make it to the clinic before one or both of them passes out.

They'll be okay, though. That's what I keep telling myself. They're in good hands. Better than ours, anyway. For all we try, everywhere we go bad things just tend to happen. Or at least that's how it works for me. Maybe the others aren't on quite the same level as bad, but I don't think it really matters who this is on right now. It might as well be all of us.

Luca sits down on the long set of front steps with a thud. That, or he falls. Not that he'll admit that.

"You should have gone with them," Seren complains, but even that's more muted than usual.

Luca shrugs, and then puts his head in his hands. It looks like that even hurts, that someone's hit him in the head. Physically _and_ theoretically.

"I feel like we maybe should have seen that coming?" Kelsea asks, looking around. It would have been a lot easier, for sure, had even one of us expected this. But judging by the group-wide reaction, it was all of us experiencing it without any warning. For once, I don't think there was a single shred of strength in unity, there. We all looked like fools, played by one person who wasn't just playing in that moment.

He's been playing for years. Longer than any of us.

Not just a Gamemaker. Game master, too.

Dimara doesn't so much put any purpose behind her sitting as she just kind of awkwardly sags down to the ground with her legs underneath her, examining the tear through her forearm with irritation in her eyes. Kelsea and Vance both follow, and then Tanis. Celia's still a foot away, staring at the last spot the truck disappeared from. I don't really blame her.

"Is this really over?" Celia wonders after a moment. "Like actually?"

"Kane let Meritt's sister go," Tanis interjects. Because that's really what I want to hear right now.

"She won't come back," Luca mutters, followed by what I'm almost certain sounds like _hopefully._ You're kidding me, right?

"And we still have to deal with the government," Alessia says. "And Ferrox, fucking apparently. But the government—"

"Please don't say the word government again," Blair groans, and then puts his hands over his ears before he apparently decides to walk down the stairs to either get away from us, or maybe just the word. A combination of both would probably be a pretty good guess. He doesn't get very far, though. He stops by the time he's only about five down, and I can't see his face, but I think I get it. This is him really taking all of this in. It's different for the rest of us. He's looking at what's in front of him - the smoke, and the fire, and the ruin, the same way Seren is. This is their home, and this is what's left of it, after all of this. I can go back home any minute now and it won't look any different than how I left it. But this?

This isn't the kind of thing you fix overnight.

Seren's staring out with the same level of confusion in her eyes, not knowing how she ended up here. It's not just the blood all over her face. Nothing anyone says would make it easier to understand either.

Honestly, I really want to sit down.

I follow him down the stairs instead.

I don't know why, either. Nothing I say is going to make him feel any better. It's just hard to forget the fact that he was there for me, even when he didn't know he was going to get involved. He still did, because there was no stopping any of it.

I stop just behind his back. "Do you want me to fuck off?"

Hell, I'd probably say yes. Blair doesn't close his eyes, but runs his hands over his face. I can't imagine that feels very good.

"You're good," he decides after a moment. "My nose hurts."

"Is it broken?"

He shrugs. "Could be."

"I feel like that's karma at work, if it is."

It takes him a moment to realize, but when he does, his lips quirk up. "I still maintain that he deserved that."

"Yeah," I agree. "He did."

Even a moment's smile can't make what he's looking at any better, and it falls rather quickly. Quicker than I was hoping. It would be so much easier, if he would just turn around and try to forget about all of it for a few seconds. I know it sounds impossible, but we've practically already done that. This shouldn't be so hard, now that it's over.

"I'm sorry about all of this."

"Sorry's are our thing, aren't they?" he asks. I'm beginning to think they really are.

"The thing is," he continues. "I'm looking at all of this and I feel like I'm supposed to be in mourning, or something. For everything that's been ruined. For my home. But it doesn't - it doesn't really feel like that, you know? It doesn't feel like my home. It just feels like I'm on the outskirts of something I don't know, or something I'm not used to seeing. It's not the same as before."

And maybe I really don't have a hope of understanding that. Twelve is still home, even after all of this. It takes and it takes but at least I know it's still there, standing even if it's not standing tall.

"This isn't home," he repeats. "And if this isn't home I don't know where the fuck it is."

It's a good thing Tanis is a few feet away. I'm sure she'd find a way to cackle at me, even in the middle of all of this.

I take a deep breath. "You can come back to Twelve with me. If you want."

His shoulders stiffen a bit, before he cranes his head back to look at me. Yeah, I'm pretty sure his nose is broken. Seen one of those before.

"Twelve sucks," he says slowly.

"Fine," I reply quickly. "Offer retracted."

I don't convince myself, or him, evidently. His shoulders shake when he starts to laugh, which is pretty impressive, for the type of situation we're standing in the middle of right now. I'll take that over him looking like there's no direction to go from here, like he's leaving whatever's left inside him on the steps and having nothing more than a body move on from it.

He stops laughing, though, and when I stop rolling my eyes long enough to look at him, he's sobered slightly. There's still the slightest trace of a smile on face.

"Thanks," he says softly. "I'll be sure to think about that."

I'm sure he will. I'm sure he'll think about that plenty, more than he probably should be, right now. There's a lot to think about, but that's one little point of light, in the middle of all this darkness.

It's pretty easy to cling to that, when faced with the stark alternatives.

Certainly easier than I would have expected.

* * *

 **Meritt Trevall, 22 years, Formerly of District One.**

* * *

Kane's always been a hell of a lot slower than him.

He's got mixed emotions, about that. Some days he just wishes he could go at the pace he wanted and not have to worry, about who was falling behind further with every step he took. Now it's kind of a relief. He's certain that if Kane was to catch up with him right now, he'd be getting dragged back in the opposite direction with very little choice in the matter.

He's probably not as fast as he'd normally be, with his bleeding leg.

But Ferrox fucking Mervaine isn't making an active run to get away from him anyway. The only reason he hasn't fully caught up is because the back alleys of Two are a twisting maze, and every time he thinks he's about to turn a corner and find him he's already gone, disappeared around the next. It's making him more annoyed, making him wonder how this could all have even happened in the first place.

He really thought all this years that it was Cambria, that led the charge to get him out. He knew it wasn't the President, not really. She just had to give the order, after being convinced to go through with it.

But everything's a _lie._ That was Ferrox too, or at least he had a hand in it. One theoretically dead person to another.

He forces himself to speed up, even though both his leg and his lungs are protesting the action. He's always been good at ignoring pain.

The next alley is too long for Ferrox to escape it, before he gets there too. But yelling is not going to happen, with how screwed up his throat currently, and he's not about to pull a Kane and tackle the guy to the ground to get him to stop running.

So he stops and pulls out the gun, and fires a single bullet down the alley.

It whizzes right past him, all the way to the concrete side of the building at the far end, and ricochets off back into the dirt, not far away from Ferrox's feet. He slows to a halt, and although his shoulders are tensed high he still doesn't necessarily look scared.

"You and your _guns_ ," he emphasizes, turning around slightly. "Do you lot ever get tired of shooting at people?"

"Says the person who gave them to us."

"Yep, that's me," Ferrox agrees. "The sole human being who armed all of the remaining Sentinels. Sounds just like me. Are you sure you're not experiencing a case of mistaken identity here?"

Meritt's not sure what he's supposed to say, or what would make sense. He just wants to stop feeling like someone screwed his head on the right way. And what, they're just expected to clean all of this up, go home, wake up tomorrow like nothing ever happened? He's probably not even capable of doing that at this point. And Ferrox is?

"You're heading for the others," he says hoarsely, and Ferrox raises his eyebrows, as is to say, _where the fuck else do you think I'd be going_?

A graveyard, maybe. That's where he should be.

He knows exactly where is he, though. And exactly where he's headed.

The footsteps behind him signal Kane's arrival, but not much else. Ferrox looks past him, and sighs.

"Put the gun down, boyfriend. I'm not in the mood."

He really does know everything. Meritt had already been trying to come to terms with it, but at this point it just seems like Ferrox is rubbing it in so that he really gets it. Kane doesn't look much more amused than he does, at the words. It's a pretty hard thing, to get Kane annoyed to the point where he's actually going to do something about it, and Meritt's been seeing a lot of that today.

"Not listening?" Ferrox asks. "Alright."

"What are you going to do?" Kane asks. "Just disappear? Leave all of this to everyone else?"

"What's wrong with disappearing?" he fires back. "You all did it. Your sister's doing it right now. I know you two let her go. I know which direction she headed, before I had to stop looking. Who knows, maybe I'll go looking for her."

"We could tell everyone," he says quietly. "If the whole world finds out, you won't be able to—"

"And who's going to believe _you_? Any of you?" Ferrox questions. "You really think you can just waltz up to someone on the street and tell them I'm alive without them running screaming in the opposite direction? We're in the same boat, you and I. We're both ghosts. There's no escaping that."

"So what, then?" Kane asks. "You fuck off, and then what?"

"You give me a goddamn day to myself, and we'll figure it out after that. The government, the Districts, all of it. But if you think for a damn second I'm thinking about that right now, you're wrong. For now I'm going to go find my wife, and my brother and my team that they haven't let me see in five years, and then I think I should get to meet my second kid for the first time. If that's alright with you."

What he went through in the aftermath was clearly worse, but he's also been dealing with a mediocre level of it for nearly three times the length Meritt did. It's kinda hard _not_ to sympathize with that, regardless of if he wants to or not. He lived it too.

"So am I free to go, then?" he continues. "Or am I getting shot again?"

Again. There's no evidence that it even happened the first time. No scar to tell me where the bullet landed, to explain why Luca didn't actually kill him.

Meritt puts his hand over Kane's gun, which was already headed closer to the ground anyway, and forces it down the last few inches. Kane doesn't fight him on it, but the frown on his face intensifies when Ferrox basically salutes them, stuffs his hands back in his pockets, and then continues on his merry way. Like they never even stopped him.

Meritt knows everything he went through fucked him up, worse than before.

He's pretty sure the same thing happened to Ferrox.

"Can you stop running off," Kane pleads. "You're gonna give me a heart attack before I hit thirty."

Meritt turns around, already feeling the last of his energy drain out of them. _We'll figure it out_. He doesn't want to figure it out. He just wants to go to sleep, or rewind the clock back five years and fix all of this mess before it had a chance to happen. At least the Games came with consistency, and the knowledge of what was about to happen next. This doesn't.

"You okay?" Kane asks.

"I don't fucking know what I am," he insists, pressing the heels of his hands into his temples. He can't press hard enough to make it hurt.

Ghost. Soldier. Person who has absolutely no fucking idea what happens next. _All of the above_.

Kane draws him closer and presses a kiss to the space left between his hands, and then pulls them back down. Meritt leans into him, burying his face up against the side of his neck.

"You're good," Kane says. Sure doesn't feel that way. Kane says that more often than he really feels it.

He continues leaning into him, and shifts on his feet. Now that there's no one to talk to the alley is very quiet. They've moved far enough away from Esterwick that they can't hear anything happening over there. It's like they've moved somewhere else entirely.

Meritt shifts on his feet. "My leg hurts."

Kane sighs. "Let's go."

* * *

The last announcement we'll get, I swear. Happy 300k.

Only the epilogues to go.

Until next time.


	57. You Survived The End

Epilogue, Part One.

* * *

 **Celia Bradshaw, 18 years, Survivor of the 160th Hunger Games.**

* * *

We definitely don't almost have a physical fight with the nurse who meets us at the front entrance of the clinic and refuses to let us go much further.

It's more of a verbal thing.

Kelsea almost gets through, but the nurse catches her at the last second. She's basically guarding the door, unwilling to let anyone through because of how busy it already is in here. There's people everywhere. There's _blood_ everywhere. Even though it's been nearly six hours there's still quite the frantic scramble. I can't even begin to imagine how many innocent people died, because he flew too far. Clearly he didn't care what he did.

There's a lot of Peacekeepers, too. Pockets of the victors.

Everyone got hit hard by this.

I don't know who actually manages to distract her long enough for me to slip through. I'm too busy trying to catch a glimpse of anything that will hand me some leverage, to no avail, when Tanis plants a hand between my shoulders and shoves me right past her. Both Nadir and Vance are pointing down different hallways, the nurse struggling to follow what both of them are doing, and she doesn't even see me go past her.

So, now I just have to find them.

I just focus on keeping my head low, like the road back home. There's definitely people looking at me, but there's no avoiding that. The most important part is that no one's trying to stop me, too focused on more important tasks once I slip into the busiest hallways. There's too many stretches with only body bags, too, surviving Peacekeepers struggling to move them out of the way in time when I quickly skirt past.

I'm really trying not to think about it.

I don't want to say we got lucky, but I think we did. At least we're all alive. Obviously it's not what we wanted it to be, but alive's as good as we always get.

Someone's starting to eyeball me a little bit too much for my liking, so I duck into the stairwell and up to the next floor. It's too busy down there anyway. Hopefully it's been long enough that they've been moved somewhere a little bit quieter.

It's almost too quiet. It's just the beeping of the machines and the soft, occasional footsteps of a nurse that passes by me as I poke my head into room after room. One steps out of a doorway three down and stops when she sees me, nodding after a moment towards the room she just stepped out of. And you don't have to tell me twice. I almost want to run as fast as I can in there, but force myself to walk at a normal pace into the room, very thankful that someone doesn't try to stop me for once.

Rooke's out cold in the bed against the nearest wall, changed into clothes that thankfully are no longer covered in his own blood, a blanket drawn up to his chin. It hardly even looks like he's breathing, but at least the lack of movement means he's not in pain.

Rory's sitting on the edge of the other. He looks up, clearly expecting the nurse back, because he blinks heavily at me a few times before I think he even fully recognizes me.

"Hey," he murmurs after a moment. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do other than stand there for a while and just look at him. He still looks pretty terrible. Worse than I ever expected to see him. Now that his face is cleaned up I can see all the scrapes and cuts on his face clear as day. His arm is in a sling held close to his chest, bandages curled around his neck and down underneath his shirt.

"I'd get up," he continues. "But I don't think I can."

There's no amusement there, hardly any energy. I cross over to him, afraid to even touch him. It's hard not to, when he looks like he should be in four different pieces and I just want to hold him together.

He reaches out with his free arm, though, weak as it is, so I don't bother trying to stop myself. I curl an arm around his back and he lays his head down on my shoulder, as gently as he can. He exhales, and then winces.

"So, what's the full report?"

He tilts his head slightly out of my shoulder, more under my chin, but doesn't open his eyes. "He's got nine broken ribs. Mostly on one side. I've only got three; they think my arm took the brunt of it when the ceiling collapsed, but it snapped my collarbone. Three broken fingers, two broken toes, and a skull fracture. Don't remember what they called it."

And what the fuck am I supposed to say to that, looking down at how he's curled in on himself, up against me? It turns out I don't have to. He forces himself back up after a second, and blinks at me again.

"But that's it," he says, and probably would have tried to manage a smile had he not seen the look on my face, a cross between a scowl and a frown. You know, that's it. Just half a dozen terrible things that shouldn't have happened to him at all. And maybe they wouldn't have, if I had just been there from the beginning. Ronan might still be here.

And I can't say that to him. He doesn't need that.

"Time to lay down," I tell him, and he nods blearily, scooting backwards away from me. I busy myself with forcing my shoes off instead of watching him try to lay down, because it's bad enough just watching him sit there in that much pain. Whatever they gave him, they could still give him more. If he'd even willingly take it, which is probably the issue.

I clamber onto the bed next to him as soon as he's settled down, even though he doesn't look particularly comfortable. I'm not sure there's a comfortable option for him right now.

"I don't think the nurse wanted you in the bed with me," he points out quietly.

"If I gave a shit what the nurse said, I'd still be downstairs."

"Where's everyone else?"

"Probably still arguing with the aforementioned nurse."

"Hope no one punches her," he mumbles, and I snort. He edges a bit closer, pushing his luck as he closes the last inch or two we had between us, and leans his head up against my arm. I'm almost kind of glad he's this out of it - it means there's less for him to think about, less things for him to question. We can deal with everything else. He just needs to sleep.

And I probably do, too, but it doesn't come easily. I don't think I ever fully go under - the whole time it feels like I can hear things from very far away. The quiet conversation of voices, but nothing I can make out. Footsteps coming and going, but never loud enough to raise any real concern.

It's relieving, to be able to just let go, even if it's for a little bit. Rory doesn't really have a choice. The second we're quiet even for a full minute he's out, the way he should have been the entire time, but unable to. I only crack open my eyes once, just to make sure Rooke hasn't moved, but he's still laying in the same position as before, thankfully.

To succumb to the blackness for good is a blessing in disguise. I open my eyes again, unaware of when all the voices had finally begun to float away. The room's nearly dark, the faintest wisps of the sunset still lingering on what little of the horizon I can see out the window, and everyone else is finally here. It takes me a second to even realize the vague shapes spread out all over the floor are people, but there's definitely six of them. Tanis has stuffed herself into the lone arm chair, and it appears Kelsea forced space up there for herself not longer after. Vance is nearly face down on the floor. Nadir's sitting up right next to the door, where it looks like she finally faded off after having convinced herself to stay awake. Dimara is using Blair's legs as a pillow, which is the most amusing thing, where he's sitting up against the wall next to Nadir.

It takes me a minute, with the dark and my sleep-heavy eyes, to realize that Rooke's awake. He's looking out the window, blinking slowly every few seconds. I force myself up a few inches, and he turns his head towards me.

"You good?" I ask quietly, and he doesn't hesitate when he nods.

"All good," he agrees, and I lay back down, looking out the window as well. It's facing the opposite way - where the sky is clear, and there's no signs of what happened to us today. Not having to see it is nice. It makes it easier to forget for a second, even if I know it's impossible to.

I close my eyes again, arm back over his waist. He hasn't moved an inch, still curled up against my chest.

Sleep comes a little easier, this time.

* * *

 **Seren Dobrana, 24 years, Victor of the 155th Hunger Games.**

* * *

It's hard to wrap your head around being the only one left.

But that's the truth, isn't it?

It didn't make sense when she first heard the words, that everyone in the victor's village was dead, and it still doesn't make sense now. Car parked just outside the broken in front gate, walking down the cobblestone paths carved through both sides. The houses all towards the back are nothing more than burnt out shells, the sides of the ones closest scorched black, but still standing.

Not much else is.

Some of the doors are kicked in. The only houses that look completely untouched are hers, and the one that belonged to Cicely, just across from it.

Everything else has very obvious signs of intrusion, ruin and wear. Even the grass that cuts between the two paths alongside the fountain is trampled flat from the soles of heavy boots. She's stepping on bullets under foot, can feel them rolling from her toes to her heels.

She doesn't know why she came here. The sun's going down, and there's no other signs of life. There was no reason for her to come here at all; she knew what happened, down to all the details.

But this is where she came, when things finally quieted down. When she could slip out for a moment unnoticed. She had gotten in one of the cars and had the key in the ignition before she had even thought about where she was going, other than away. But something deep down in here hadn't wanted to come here. She hadn't wanted to turn down that last road on the way here.

She did anyway. And standing in front of the closed door to Ashlar's house, there's really no going back.

Inside the house is dark and quiet. There's a blood splatter all along the front entryway, and she nearly crumples to the ground at the sight of it. It's smeared all over the floor, too, cut through with half-clean swatches of the wood underneath, like someone started trying to clean it up. Two stools from the island are knocked over, and she steps over them into the kitchen itself. There's glass everywhere, a bloody handprint wrapped around the edge of the marble counter, and she folds her hand over it. Much larger than hers.

She shouldn't have come here. She can't tell what urge is getting stronger, the one to scream or the one to run back down the steps and towards the car.

Another pair of headlights cut through the darkened paths outside.

It wasn't that, it couldn't be, but once the first tear broke free, she wasn't able to stop.

She pressed her forehead to the countertop, struggling to breathe through the unbroken stream of tears now coming down her face. It was too much. She wanted to be here, and she didn't. She wanted to cry until she couldn't anymore but lock herself away at the same time, until all of this was gone and she could just forget about it, but she couldn't.

Her chest hurts and heaves. Her whole body was shaking, and she couldn't make it stop. It just hurt, everything _hurt_ and it had nothing to do with the injuries she had now. This was all her fault, all on her, if she just hadn't fucking bothered to come back in the first place—

The floor creaks behind her, and she can't even find the energy to lift her head up. She can't stop crying, or shaking, or envisioning the last moments he had in this house before someone came in here and killed him.

"Hey," Meritt says, voice ragged, and the sound of his voice pulls another sob out of her. He only made a noise so he wouldn't sneak up on her - it's something he's gotten better at, something he knows he has to do so he doesn't scare anyone. But at least if she was scared she wouldn't have the time to feel like this, and she thinks being scared is better than being miserable.

One of his hands lands on her back, very steady in comparison to her vicious trembling. His other he uses to all but pull her back from the counter, forcing her to stand up straight, before he turns her around. He doesn't protest when she goes to bury her face in his shoulder, just wraps his arms around her and keeps her there instead. She can't even get her own arms up to hug him back.

So now she's just being useless, on top of everything else.

"I'm sorry," she chokes out.

"For what?"

"I should have just stayed in the woods with you guys. At least then none of this would have fucking happened."

"This isn't your fault."

"Feels like it is."

"You forget who you're talking to?" he asks. "Everything will feel like your fault, if you let it."

That doesn't mean she can just convince herself that it's not the truth, because she's not a liar. It really does feel like it's her fault, that she brought this all crashing down on them. She's the one that came back and told Ashlar everything, the one that convinced him she wasn't entirely crazy and that they could do this, and she made the mistake of getting everyone involved when she should have just been keeping them out of it.

"It's like they wanted to kill all of them," she says. "They knew about Cicely, and they just wanted me to be the only one left."

"I feel like that's kind of insulting to me and Blair."

She pulls back and looks up at him, even though she can't really see. "Don't even. Blair might like, halfway count as a victor, but you definitely do not."

Meritt cracks a smile, back at it again with the downright terrible since of humor, since he came back.

"I can accept me. But give Blair some credit. And don't think of it as being the only one left, not even in Two. There's victor's everywhere, you've got people everywhere. Me. All of us. Even the nine of them, who insisted on all sleeping in the same room. You're never gonna be alone in this."

It's harder when you're in the moment, when it seems like there's no coming out of the other side. She came here because she thought she could come to terms with it, that looking at it would put something at her in peace. But it doesn't. It just makes everything worse. She still can't manage to fully stop crying, even though Meritt apparently doesn't care.

"Are they really all sleeping in the same room?" she asks. Fixate on something else, to get over this one.

"Sticking together. That remind you of anyone?"

"Really trying to follow in our footsteps," she mumbles, and he pulls her close again. This time she untangles her arms and hugs him back. Squeezing too tight, like always. He still doesn't even seem real, most days. She knows they all feel the same, about him. Terrible, for being so grateful that he's back, after what he went through. But she'd do anything to keep him here now.

Win the Games. Disappear into the woods.

Set the world on fire.

"Think they're gonna stick together?"

"Probably," he responds. "Turning into a miniature Sentinel squad. Better tell everyone not to name them, it'll get to their heads."

"They'll just name themselves."

" _Good_ ," he insists. "I don't wanna do it."

Neither does she, if she's in the mood to continue being honest. She really just wants to be done with all of this. There's a lot of things she's gonna have to learn to accept and let go of; a practical laundry list of terrible things that she's done or seen or visited in the aftermath of. She really did long for something more, several years ago.

Right now she just wants a break.

"Thank you for coming back."

"Thank you for winning."

Both things neither of them had total control over. Both things that either of them could have chosen to regret, when they took a step forward and looked back at it. And maybe a small part of both of them does. And maybe that never goes away.

Maybe that's just something you learn to live with.

* * *

 **Kiero Mearlove, 26 years, Victor of the 150th Hunger Games.**

* * *

He doesn't think he's ever been so tired in his life.

His head is spinning, vaguely thumping where it's resting against the car's window. That could be the fact that Mia seems to be conveniently hitting every single bump that exists in the road, or the fact that he hasn't really slept in over twenty-four hours, or eaten in half of that.

He doesn't even remember getting in the car. They had carried Fenton out of the courtyard and to one of their medics, where Kiero was sure he was safe. After that it was just a lot of Mia pushing him around in whatever direction she saw fit at the time. Making sure Vance and the others finally got to the clinic. Trying to make sense of the dead bodies of some of the other victors, until he no longer had the nerve to keep looking.

Kiero's a hundred percent certain Mia's only driven half a dozen times in her life, if that.

None of them really care.

Aveza's been asleep, sprawled out in the backseat, for nearly two hours. He undid his seatbelt long ago, to curl his legs up to his chest. He can't remember how long ago Mia started driving. Six hours? Seven?

He just knows that he can see the lights of Eight, now, and the vaguest shapes of the victor's village forming ahead.

Mia just wanted to get them home. That's what Della had wanted her to do from the beginning. If Della had it her way, none of them would have left at all. She was still trying to be their voice of reason, because Rayon knew there was no point in raising the effort to fight about it. And maybe it's a good thing they went. Maybe someone else would have died if they hadn't.

There's really no way of knowing. Kiero can't remember who's alive and who's not, at this point.

There's too many dead people in his life to count, anymore.

It's pitch black. He can't see anyone, and hardly any lights. There are a few, at the walls surrounding the village, but not much else. Mia pulls the car up directly into the middle of the cluster of their houses, and stops.

It takes Kiero a full minute to lift his head up off the window, and look around, blearily. All of the houses are dark. It's the middle of the night; he can't say he blames anyone, for not waiting up. They could have been back any time. They may not have come back at all. No one was willing to think it, but it still could have happened regardless of what they wanted.

"Home sweet home," Mia announces, and then reaches across him to open his door. Without the weight of it at his side he nearly falls out.

He clambers out, slowly, stretching all of his limbs out one by one. His feet are both half-asleep, and he takes a moment to shake them out, wincing. He inches to the back door and opens it, but Aveza still hasn't moved. If she doesn't move soon, Mia's going to grab her by the ankles and drag her out the opposite way. That's not going to end well for any party involved.

He reaches forward to shake her shoulder, and someone grabs his own.

He jumps, unwillingly, and makes a confused noise before Soren spins him around so fast his vision goes all blurry once again. The door to their house is open. He hadn't even heard it.

His vision won't really clear, no matter how long and hard he tries to look up at him, so he gives up and steps forward to face-plant himself into Soren's chest.

"Jesus," Soren says in alarm. "Are you okay? Just look at me for a second."

Nope. He's not doing that. You literally could not _pay him_ to do that right now. Soren is very warm and overall very reassuring and Kiero could not give less of a shit, about anything else going on. He can't even manage to force a reaction out of himself. Soren keeps trying to pull back, awkwardly, and get a good look at him, but it's not really working.

"Tired," he forces out, eventually, but even one lonely word seems to calm Soren down a bit. Finally one arm curls around his lower back, the other cradled against the back of his head. That's better.

"I'm fine too," Mia says, rather loudly. "Thank-you for asking."

Kiero's pretty sure the only reason Soren's arm very briefly leaves his back is so that he can give Mia the finger. It wouldn't be the first time.

"I'll deal with this," she continues. "Go to sleep."

Kiero would love that, right here in the middle of the pathway, standing up. He doesn't, however, think that Soren would appreciate it. Some people apparently need beds to sleep in. He's slept on a lot worse. He's also walked on a lot worse, but the stairs seem like a mountain even with Soren pulling him up after him. He herds him over the threshold and coaxes him through the door, shutting it tight behind them.

It's a miracle he even gets his shoes off without falling over, a true testament to how tightly Soren's holding onto his arm. Soren kicks them to the side once they're off, probably so he doesn't trip over them. Again, it wouldn't be the first time.

"Alright, look at me," he instructs. "Are you okay?"

He shakes his head. Soren takes a step closer and props his head up.

"What's wrong? Did you guys not do it? Are we still in trouble?"

"We're fucked," he says flatly. "We have to— we have to figure out what we're going to do now, and who's going to lead everyone and what the Capitol is going to do, and—"

"Hey, easy," Soren breathes. "It can wait until the morning."

"What time is it?"

"Five."

"Longer than the morning," he mumbles.

"Longer than the morning, then," Soren agrees. "Just stop thinking about that shit now, _please_."

It's so hard, but it sounds very easy, when Soren says it like that. Now that he's standing here in front of him he wants nothing more than to collapse into him, exhausted. Just let himself go entirely. It's so tempting, more than tempting, but he just can't stop _thinking_ —

Soren sighs, and leans down to kiss him.

Kiero stops thinking quite quickly.

* * *

 **Ferrox Mervaine, 38 years, Former Head Gamemaker.**

* * *

He hasn't had a drink since he woke up from the coma.

That's four years, eleven months and two days.

Not that he's been counting.

He always joked, loudly and often, about he needed a drink, but no one ever cared. Dominika wasn't about to pump him full of alcohol when he was supposed to be supervising a group of maniacs, and said maniacs didn't have access to it any more than he did. Whenever he saw Cambria they searched her, made her leave everything outside. Vesper was never in the mindset to even _think_ to bring him anything.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, not even three full drinks down, that he can't even think straight.

"You've been staring into that glass for a solid minute now," Cambria tells him, and he looks up at her. She's the only other one still awake, sitting just next to him at the table. He has no idea what time it is. The abandoned factory is very black, save for the two or so lights by the door and the lantern in the middle of the table. It's no wonder everyone else went to sleep.

"Have I?"

She hums and scoots her chair closer, until she can lean her head on his shoulder. He's pretty sure she's had double to drink than what he has.

"My tolerance is shit now," he complains.

"That's pretty funny."

"I don't think it's funny," he protests. It doesn't even taste that good. Maybe that's because he's been staring at it so long he let the ice melt. He thinks he's been doing a lot of that. Staring. The second everyone was willing to leave him alone, when Lex had finally stopped crying and hugging him along with pretty much everyone in the room, it hadn't been hard to go all vacant behind the eyes again.

It's a little bit of a problem.

"Are you ever going to finish that?"

He shrugs. "I'm savoring it."

He's not sure that's really what he's doing. He kinda wants to down it. He kinda wants to pass out. He kinda can't decide what he wants to do, honestly.

"How much sleep have you gotten since this all happened?"

Ferrox doesn't even think he knows what sleep is, anymore. Definitely hasn't gotten a full night's sleep in that entire four years, eleven months, and two days, that's for certain. That's just what happens, when you're surrounded by the people he was surrounded by. It always felt like one was watching him, waiting for him to royally fuck something up, enough that they could hurt him. Or kill him. He could never really tell where the line was drawn, in their eyes.

It's probably a good thing Carnelia disappeared as quickly as she did. She'd kill him, for this. No hurt involved.

"You know what I'm offended by," he says randomly. "The fact that Vesper got _engaged_ without letting me meet the guy first."

"You told him we were getting married three hours before we did."

"That's fair warning, in my eyes."

She scoffs. "Of course it is. But Auriel's _fine._ Spent a lot of time covering our asses. Way too much time, if you ask me. Don't chase him off. We needed him."

"Needed Resani too. Look how that turned out."

Cambria goes silent, and leaning against his shoulder he can't make out her face. Can't imagine what she's thinking. All these years and they didn't really plan for that. Sure, they had a back-up plan, but it wasn't because they thought someone was going to turn on them. It was just in case, because they couldn't afford to fuck this up. And they shouldn't have.

"He's dead," Cambria says quietly. "I'd really rather not think about it."

"I know he's dead," he insists. "I was—"

 _There. A part of that_. No matter what he thinks of to finish that sentence, none of it will come out. Cambria lifts her head off his shoulder and sits up, turning around to look at him. He closes his eyes, but closing his eyes doesn't do an ounce of good for the fucked up mess that has been his head, for several years now. Cambria reaches forward to run her fingers through his hair, over the place where the scar would be, if he had one. If they hadn't just gotten rid of it while he was out.

He's not comfortable with understanding how all the tributes feel, finally.

The door at the far end of the room creaks open.

Ferrox doesn't even realize, until Cambria whirls around. He's very thankful she keeps her hand where it is, even as Luca Arker steps through the door like he just does this every day.

Which, not far off. Apparently he does.

"Do you always just show up places you're not invited?" Cambria asks him. Ferrox doesn't miss the way she steps in front of him, slightly, like a buffer. Like that would really matter. He looks pretty thoroughly exhausted, bandaged in several places, his clothes still spotted through with blood. His eyes are a little unfocused, clearly from whatever someone eventually managed to shove down his throat. Not morphling, though, or he'd be out by now. But something.

Luca's not here to fight him.

Cambria looks like she wants to start something, though, and if Ferrox wasn't so tired and fogged over himself he probably would back her up. But he really doesn't want to.

"Let me talk to him," he says quietly, and she looks down at him, incredulously.

"You're insane."

"Thanks for pointing it out," he says, smiling grimly. "I'm good. Go to sleep. I'll be there in five minutes."

He can tell by the look in her eyes that she most definitely isn't going to sleep until he's safely tucked away in the room alongside her. Especially not when she leaves him out here, with the person who almost technically killed him. Who thought he did, until today.

He pulls her down until he can nudge his nose against hers and then kiss her, gently.

She pulls away before he can do anything else. " _Five minutes._ "

They both watch her walk off. It's pretty hard not to, with how hard she's glaring. Ferrox can't tell if she's glaring at his stupidity, or at Luca's general presence. Both, if he was a betting man. He's way too used to being on the receiving end of that look, and judging by Luca's lack of reaction, he probably is too. Oddly enough, they're in the same boat right now.

"By the way," she says, just before she steps into the next room. "I still hate you."

Again, Ferrox _really_ isn't sure who she's talking to there. He's kinda hoping it wasn't directed at him, but waits until she's gone to get up in search of wherever she last dropped the bottle of whiskey. Maybe that will make all of this better. Maybe not.

He has no idea where it is, though. He can hear Luca ambling across the room and wants to turn around, but doesn't for the sake of his own sanity. The sooner he stops checking over his shoulder every two seconds, the better. If Luca was really going to try something he'd have probably done it by now. Or not have indirectly announced himself first.

Luca drops himself down into the chair opposite his own with a heavy thump.

"It's over there," he says tiredly, and nods towards the other side of the room. Ferrox makes a beeline for the half-empty bottle of whiskey and then refills his glass nearly to the brim, before he heads back to his own chair. He isn't sure how Sentinels manage to make literally everything they do inherently _creepy_. Maybe he's insulting himself, by saying that. He's half one himself.

He takes a sip. It still tastes terrible.

"Shouldn't you be at the clinic?" he questions, leaning back and propping his feet up on the edge of the table. Luca shrugs.

"I was."

"No shit, really? Never would have guessed. Shouldn't you still be there?"

"I'm fine. They gave me a blood transfusion."

Fine and _had a blood transfusion_ do not belong in the same sentence. He probably shouldn't even be walking around. Guaranteed if someone else had it their way he'd still be hooked up to three different machines, drugged straight to hell, and asleep. But to do that they'd probably have to tie him to the bed's handles, and Ferrox doesn't envision that going the way anyone wants it to.

"So why are you here?"

"Wish I had a clue. Kinda wish I hadn't."

"Door's right there," he offers. Not that he really expects Luca to get up and walk out, at least not quickly, with how slow he got over here. He just looks really confused, though, and Ferrox has never seen someone stare at a table this intently before in his life. He can't help but wonder what the table ever did to him.

"I hope you're aware you've ripped a solid half of my brain out of my skull," Luca says slowly, which wouldn't make sense to someone else. Looking at his face Ferrox knows exactly what he means by that. His face earlier added a lot to that explanation as well. Ferrox has never had someone look at him like that before. He still isn't even sure what to call it.

"Technically you did the same thing to me. So I guess we're even."

And that doesn't help. Luca doesn't open his mouth again for a solid minute, but resorts to staring at his own lap instead. Ferrox reckons he has about a minute and a half left, if that, before Cambria comes to get him.

"I should've shot you twice."

"Should've shot me once the right way," he fires back, and Luca puts both of his hands over his face, groaning. Ferrox doesn't really know what he's supposed to say to him. There's nothing that's going to help this, until all of them get a full twelve hours of sleep and start figuring it out after that.

He pushes the drink across the table. "Here, finish this."

"Where are you going?

"To sleep? Where are you going?"

Luca sighs quietly. "I don't fucking know."

And God, does Ferrox understand that one.

He gets up and shoves the chair back in. Luca grabs the glass but doesn't do anything with it other than stare into it like Ferrox is so sure he was doing, when Cambria finally called him out on it. He stops at the doorway, same as Cambria. Luca actually sits up to look him in the eye.

"Listen, Arker," he starts. "Just get those kids home. For good this time. And then go home yourself, if you want to. Tour the goddamn country, if not. Preferably never point a gun at my head again in your life. But maybe just get some sleep first. I think you need it."

Luca is looking at him like he just grew two heads. Ferrox thinks the world would make more sense if that was the case.

He stays there for a long minute, with the door cracked open half an inch. There's no doubt that Luca can tell he's still watching him, but doesn't say anything. After a very long while he scoops up the glass and downs the entire thing in one huge gulp, grimacing before he puts it back down on the table. He watches him get up from the chair, clearly trying not to hurt himself even further.

He should probably follow him outside and make sure he doesn't pass out in the alley. And something in him genuinely wants to.

Ferrox releases a breath, and closes the door.

* * *

 **Luca Arker, 28 years, Formerly of District Six.**

* * *

He doesn't remember much of his walk back to the clinic.

It's dark, and everything's vaguely spinning, which can't be good.

Karsi meets him at the front doors, muttering something that sounds about like Mac wanting to beat the hell out of him for wandering off, which is as close to accurate as it will get. She at least seems content when he parks himself on the front steps, because at least there she can watch and check on him every once in a while. He wants to wait for Seren, and he also doesn't think he's getting any further right now. He underestimated how long of a walk it really was.

It doesn't take very long, luckily enough, because he was getting closer by the second to falling asleep right on the front steps. Kane clambers out of the car with Meritt tucked under his arm, who looks about as close to sleep as Luca feels.

Kane gives him a look. "Do you need help getting up?"

"Probably," he says slowly. "I'm good. Just go to sleep."

He's pretty sure everyone else is already asleep, save for Mac and Karsi, and that's for the best. As soon as he gets everyone else into the same state he'll feel like he has the right to do so himself.

Kane stares for a heartbeat longer, and then nods. Meritt doesn't even look like he's paying attention, but when has Meritt ever listened to something he told him to do?

"Hey," Seren says, and nudges him gently in the leg. He blinks up at her, still disoriented more than he'd really like. At least her figure in front of him is staying in one spot, instead of doubling like Ferrox's was. That was more terrifying than he'd like to admit.

"You should probably be asleep too," she tells him. He was hoping it was the initial distance, but it's for sure not. She's definitely been crying, while he was off wandering around by himself. It's a good thing Meritt and Kane went after her when they did. He doesn't think anyone would take kindly to him taking another impromptu trip like this to go and find her himself.

"Soon," he agrees, and reaches out for her. His shoulder burns at the movement, but he really couldn't care less. She takes his hand, holding firm when he attempts to tug her forward.

"I'm not sitting on you," she protests. "Are you not in enough pain?"

He shrugs again. Her sitting on him certainly isn't going to make the ache all over his entire body any worse. She rolls her eyes, which is better than the sadness written all over her face, and concedes to sit down beside him, leaning into his side. She's bandaged all over too, and he has to remind himself of that. No point in making either of them worse right now. Besides, it's good enough to wrap his arms around her, no matter how awkward it may be, and rest his chin at the top of her head, where it always seems to fit best.

"It's a mess out there," she says quietly, several minutes later. "Just a fucking mess. The village, the town - it's destroyed."

"We're gonna fix it," he responds.

" _We're_?"

"What, did you think we were just gonna pack up and leave you do it by yourself?" he asks. "Like anyone would ever want to. We're gonna fix it. We're gonna make sure everything's good here, all of us, then we're gonna go home. All of us."

"Home sounds good," she murmurs, and he actually agrees with that. To think of a time when he hated Six with a passion that felt stronger than anything else - that time no longer exists now.

When Seren lifts her head up to look at him her eyes are once again glimmering when the threat of unshed tears. He knows there's no getting rid of that, especially not right now, but he relishes the little smile he gets when he reaches forward to cup her face. It almost seems like his arm even hurts less, that time, like it knows exactly what its purpose is.

"I love you," she says.

"Love you too," he answers, and she leans forward to kiss him. He holds onto that little moment of serenity, even when she pulls back to press their foreheads together, that little bit of time where nothing around them matters at all and when it feels like everything, no matter what it is, will keep on going around them no matter what happens.

"Are we gonna be okay?" she asks, and if he had to stand up and fight right now to get rid of the uncertainty in her voice, then he would.

"Always."

They will be. All of them. When the sun rises in the morning, when he's fast asleep with her tucked safely in his arms, then he'll know it for sure. He'll always have those words ringing in his ears, the knowledge that he's loved and can love and won't ever have to lose that, and he knows it deep down inside too, in a place that didn't exist for him before.

A place that he's so grateful to have now.

And they're gonna be okay.

* * *

I've spent a lot of time writing this AN for someone who's super lazy.

The only reason this isn't going at the end of the final chapter is because it would ruin my Aesthetic and also I'm putting it here because I can do what I want.

I almost didn't come back to write this stupid behemoth. I took just over a year break between Mayday and this, and when I started this I had no idea if I'd have the mental fortitude to finish it. Flash-forward to June, when I finished it (yes, it's been that long), sat back and went: what the _fuck_ did I just do? Why did I just write 320k in eight months? I still don't know. I don't know why I'm _still_ writing an even lengthier AU centered around this story, because it has ruined me, and I really, really don't know why I think writing a fourth one is a good idea.

And I realize, in the corniest way possible, that a lot of it has to do with you guys. To anyone who's talked to me since the beginning of 2015, to anyone who's made me scream or cry or be generally horrified (you know who you are), thank you. Regardless of how many reviews I got towards the end it really was worth it. Yes, I was the one who wrote it, but I really don't think I would have without you guys. Know I love you for that.

 _Invictus_ will be started sometime in early 2019. I'll be posting two tie-in one-shots to this story sometime between now and then, and I'll continue writing that stupid AU, and I'll do it for anyone that cares. Or maybe I'll just do it for myself.

So yes, this may be the ending of a trilogy (and I'm pretty proud of that fact), but it's not the end.

Until next time.


	58. What Now?

Epilogue, Part Two.

* * *

 **...**

* * *

It's not an easy thing - getting home.

In fact, you could argue that getting home is the hardest thing, in the midst of this. The first time, _and_ the second. As many times as it takes until there's either no home to go back to, or until you never have to leave at all.

Home is in a lot of different places for all of them. Places that are very far apart, separated by fences ten feet high, impenetrable up until a month ago. And there's something to be said, about how little discussion there is in the choice to go home. Most people would think it was unspoken, that home was just the right choice. But that's not the case for them. It's the very familiar feeling of knowing they'll all be pulled apart once again, even if that's what's best for them. There's only so much healing you can do together.

Sometimes you have to do it on your own.

Two weeks into the _after_ Luca and Meritt pack two cars up, before the sun's even fully up. Half because it's easy to just do it when no one's looking, and half so that no one else yells at them for the simple fact that they're two recently injured people packing up a car. It takes a bit longer than they'd like, to actually get everyone together. Two weeks or not, most injuries don't fade that fast. Not when they're serious.

It's far in the afternoon by the time they leave, though that's mostly due to the fact that Rory spends an hour arguing with them, insistent that they take Rooke home before him. An argument he somehow winds up _winning._

Kelsea's really not sure how he wound up winning.

But it doesn't really come as a surprise to her that they stop long after midnight. Luca and Seren leave the car to go sleep in the other one with Kane and Meritt, which ultimately leaves the nine of them alone, all of them sprawled out along the open floor in the back, in the absolute middle of nowhere.

Everyone's asleep. Everyone's been asleep for a while, save for Kelsea. It could be for some alarming, earth-shattering reason. It probably should be, but it's not. Kelsea just can't shake the feeling, that she's had no idea what day it's been for weeks now. Which means, easily, that her birthday was probably a few days ago, and she didn't even remember it.

It's not like it really matters. She's just never really spent a birthday like this before.

Have any of them, though? In and out of the clinic, trying to get each other back on their feet, holding on tight so they don't go over. It's been a long, tedious cycle.

But she really wouldn't trade it for anything else. Looking at them now, all fast asleep, she wouldn't want anything else. It's quiet, breath finally coming even.

"Go to sleep," Vance mutters, and she looks up at him. He's sitting up, leaning against the wall. Maybe not all asleep. There's not much room for error, here. Her legs are tossed over his because there's nowhere else for them to go. She's tired. For how much they've all been sleeping, it's kind of a miracle that she still can.

"You too," she insists, before she closes her eyes.

Vance makes a vague noise.

She's out before she hears the end of it.

—

It's hard to accept the fact that this is all over.

Vance knows that's not what Kelsea was thinking about. It could've been any number of things. They've all got shit to deal with, things in their heads that no one will ever know about.

Kelsea falls asleep, and he doesn't. He feels a little bit wired. There's hardly any noise. Nothing to raise any concern, but he's concerned about something. Or at least his brain is. He knows there's no danger out here. Even if there was they have undeniable proof that they can handle it now. And Vance isn't scared. He doesn't know why he's feeling what he's feeling.

He doesn't know a lot of things.

He hears the footsteps coming through the grass just barely, but the opening of the driver's side door is louder than anything else. Kane slips very quietly into the front seat and edges the door closed behind him. He glances back at all them, lingering on Vance staring back at him for a second, before he turns back towards the pad of paper in his left hand, the pencil in his right.

"Can't sleep either?"

He shrugs, and he doesn't push it. He sinks down onto the floor the last few inches he can gain, awkwardly hunched over at the shoulders, and puts his head on his knees. He can't stop moving his hands where they're curled around his legs, though, fingers tapping away anxiously at the hem of his pants. Kane flips to a new page, and while he can't quite see exactly what he's doing from here he can occasionally hear the rhythmic scratch of the pencil across the paper, and it's almost enough to lull him into sleep.

Almost is rarely good enough.

Regardless, his eyes are half-closed, so he doesn't see Kane reach back a while later, holding onto both things, until they're nearly an inch from his nose.

He doesn't lift his head off his knees.

"You're antsy," Kane says. "Same way I'm antsy. Artist habit. Take it."

"More of a painter," he replies, but finds himself plucking both things out of his hands anyway. "Don't really draw much."

"Never said it had to be good." Kane seems satisfied that he's holding onto them, and twists back into the front seat, already closing his eyes.

It's not a lie. Vance never really draws. Maybe it comes down to planning. They don't do much of that either. They just start moving, just start in filling the gray and brown slates of walls with brighter colors, and they figure it out as they go.

He flips to a blank page, the tip of the graphite resting against his knees.

He doesn't like dwelling in the past, and he doesn't like living too far in the future.

Maybe it's time he started doing a little bit of both.

—

There's no energy really left in Rooke for him to put up a fight, the whole way to Nine.

He hears someone say that they're getting close, but falls asleep with his head in someone's lap not a minute later. He's better. Kind of. He can walk now, although it's sort of an odd shuffle, because stepping too harshly still hurts. Someone's usually hovering over him whenever he does, ready to catch him. It's not his legs that's the issue, though. Sometimes his brain just quits on him, when he spends too long on his feet.

Or when he spends too long laying down.

So right now, really.

He feels the car stop, and lifts his head up when he realizes what that means, exactly. They've only stopped to sleep, or when someone finally complained about having to go to the bathroom. This time Dimara pushes open one of the back doors, and even though his eyes are still heavy with sleep he can make out his house, maybe twenty feet away. Not even.

"Alright, out you get," Blair says, and Rooke very carefully edges out of the car and onto the ground below with Blair holding onto both of his arms. They stay that way while he gets used to the feeling of his shoes settling into the dirt road again, almost unable to believe that he's home again. For a while it didn't really feel like he was going to make it back.

The front door opening says otherwise.

It's Beckett, and no one else. Just like when he left. His brother stops at the sight of him. Rooke is aware of just how bad he still looks. Glass and road rash does wonders to the human body, especially at such high speeds, and that's just what Beckett can see right now. He doesn't know about everything underneath, all the other bruises and scrapes and broken ribs.

He pulls away, and Blair lets him go, one arm still waiting to catch him.

He doesn't get more than two steps away before Beckett's on him, harder than anyone's grabbed him in the past two weeks, and he can't help the hiss of pain that escapes him as he's jerked into his brother's arms.

"Gotta go easy on me," he gasps out, and Beckett's arms around him loosen immediately, although he doesn't let go. Rooke didn't really expect him to. His hands hover wildly for a moment, clearly trying to figure out where he should and shouldn't put his hands, but Rooke doesn't care about that.

He told Beckett his brother would come back. Then he didn't know how much of it was a lie, and how much Beckett would come to believe one day.

It's the truth. It really is.

And he's not sure who's more relieved about it.

—

Rory remembers very little about getting home.

Someone had basically carried him inside. More than one person, probably. He had his feet under him at some point, long enough for several different people to reach forward for him and hug him, as gently as they could. And even though he tries it all blurs and spins around him, even as he tries desperately to cling to it for as long he can.

He wakes up in his bed.

He's actually warm. Curled in on himself as much as he can, through the pain. Someone's moving near the foot of the bed. Opening a drawer.

"Mom?" he croaks out, and in less than a second she's sitting next to him at the edge of the bed. He relaxes, and so does she when she smooths a hand over the top of his head, fingers very gentle.

"Hey, sweetheart."

He kind of wants to cry, all of a sudden. Because he's back in his bed. Because his mom is still here, carefully watching over him. Because he knows, even though he doesn't remember it, that the others are gone. With all the pain he's been in emotions have been one of the few things that haven't really gotten through. But they are now.

"Is Celia still here?"

"She's on the couch. She didn't want to bug you."

That's one good thing, through the haze of all the other emotions threatening to choke him. She's still running her hand over his hair and down to the base of his neck, stopping where the bandages begin. He's clinging to it, when he couldn't earlier. Otherwise it's very dark, and he can hardly make her out, and when he moves all the pain flares back to life again, insistent and never-ending.

"Go to sleep," she murmurs. "I won't go anywhere."

She knows. She always knows.

Having someone know is a very small point of light, in the midst of all this darkness.

—

The car's down three people.

Tanis is not a huge fan of that fact.

They were all complaining initially, about it being over-crowded. That's what they got for being stubborn and trying to stay all in one car for the duration of the trip. Now it's like someone cut off one of the limbs that is their little group.

A fact she's not sure Blair would appreciate much, if she said it out-loud.

It's too weird, to have space to stretch in every direction, going to sleep. She slips out the back doors instead and clambers onto the roof of the car as soundlessly as she can manage.

It's not bad out here. In Seven you don't really see the stars much, unless you're willing to try your luck standing in the middle of the road. The canopy hides pretty much everything else. It's a cloak of darkness to most people - to her it's familiarity. Being out here is a little weird, the space too open and wide and stretching as far as the eye can see.

She doesn't like that, either.

The back door opens again and Nadir appears, glancing around for her before hauls herself onto the roof too, a little less gracefully. Tanis lays down, even though the roof of the car is harsh and uncomfortable where it's digging into her spine, and Nadir sprawls out next to her, shoulders pressed together.

"Thinking?"

Tanis nods, even if Nadir doesn't need to know that she's mostly thinking about how much she hates the sight of a field. So much so that she hopes she never sees one, ever again.

"Think we've all been doing a lot of thinking," she continues.

"Yeah? 'Bout what?"

Tanis hasn't been, not really, so she's curious. Nadir sighs and continues staring upward, and Tanis stares at the side of her face for a full minute before she gives up and rolls onto her back again. So many people look to the stars for answers, and she's not sure why. There's nothing up there. Nothing that saved them, a hundred and sixty years into it. There's no answers anywhere but the ground.

"I didn't tell you something," Nadir starts. "About me. Or something that happened in my life, I guess."

"You're not obligated to tell me things."

"I know, but I told Blair? Kinda. And now I'm wondering to myself why I didn't tell you, and I don't really have an answer for it. But I just feel like I should."

Tanis considers that for a moment. "You told Blair and not me? Dick move."

Nadir snorts, and Tanis smiles. They're all an honest to god mess, one that someone has to start putting back together eventually. Clearly _something_ happened, something big enough that Nadir feels like she should tell her, that it will have an impact. Maybe it will. But the fact alone that she's willing to tell her in the first place means more than actually getting the words out.

"Well, you can tell me whenever you want," she says. "Or not."

"No, I will," Nadir insists. "Just - just give me a minute."

Tanis can do that. After all, they've got a lot of minutes to spare, now.

—

Running on auto-pilot is a thing Celia is becoming very good at.

She's sleeping. Sort of. She's only really eating because Rory's mother is forcing her to whenever her stomach even starts rumbling. She checks on him more than she probably needs to, doesn't go home. Goes to sleep on the couch every night at the end of it all, which is about the loneliest she's felt in a very long time. It sucks more than she'd like to admit.

She winds up collecting all of the weapons she took and what's left of Rory's arrows and heads for the Academy, during an early morning when the rest of the house is still quiet. Leaving them around the living room is just asking for trouble, and she really doesn't want another arrow in the arm.

She slips through the same window. Alone this time. There's a fine layer of dust over everything in the hall, and she makes sure to click the light to the armory on before she starts on putting everything away, methodically. There are footsteps coming from other parts of the building, even a set headed towards her, but she keeps her eyes firmly focused on the wall.

Just trying to get out.

She doesn't expect Theo to be leaning in the doorway when she finally fits the sword back into place on a rack. He looks about how she feels. Drained. Wrung-out. Like he's cried more than he would have liked to, in the past few weeks. For a second she can't help but flash back to Ronan, standing there while Rory stammered out an explanation that had resulted in Ronan insisting he was coming with them—

Theo looks at her. "Do you need a hug?"

Celia is very alarmed to feel tears spring to her eyes almost immediately, but not surprised by it. "I don't know?"

She doesn't know what she needs. That's scarier than all the crying she's been doing in a bathroom in a house that she shouldn't even be living in. She always felt so sure of everything before, but when Theo steps forward and wraps his arms around her, like he's certain she's going to fall apart any second, she realizes she knows fuck all about anything in the world.

"You're not the only one," Theo says, voice thick with tears himself. She knew that.

It still means a lot to hear someone say it, when sometimes she feels like the only person in the world still moving.

—

It's basically the running joke, that Dimara will mother them all to death.

But she's not going to get the chance.

No one's said anything, but One can't be far off. Tanis hasn't even been gone twelve hours, Vance not even a full day. It's only a matter of time before they hit the fence and she's forced out of the car, back towards her girlfriend and her family and the pile of ashes that still must be left in the middle of the District.

Minus that last thing, it would be like if she had won. If she was stepping off the train, fresh from the Capitol. But if that was the case she wouldn't have a still-healing bullet wound in her forearm, and she wouldn't have caught a glimpse of the ocean before they left Four. The first time in her life she had been it, and it was gone before she could really take in what she had seen.

She wants to go back. She wants to take Kali and see the ocean.

But the ocean's not the only reason.

"It's too early to be getting emotional," Blair mumbles, without opening his eyes. That probably has something to do with the fact that Nadir's using one of his legs as a pillow, and in turn he's got his head on Dimara's shoulder.

A true shocker.

He must be able to feel the tenseness all the way through her, though, a far cry to how relaxed she had felt before, watching them all return home, one by one. But now it's her turn, and even though she wants nothing more than to have Kali back in her arms again she doesn't really want to let this go, either. Whatever this even is. She's not sure anyone knows.

Blair sighs and wiggles his arm free from where it's pressed between them and then drapes it over her shoulders. It's not as weird as it should be, to have a metal arm being the thing holding you close.

She sighs too, and lets her head rest against his.

Soon. Not yet, but soon.

She's still got time.

—

Blair's not really surprised, that him and Nadir have hardly talked in the past however many hours it's been.

Down to two. Meritt and Kane already pulled off, headed back to Two. Seren and Luca are a minute away from stopping in Twelve and then turning around themselves. It almost feels like he's going to be sick.

The car does stop. Nadir opens both back doors, slips out, and then turns around to look at him.

He doesn't move. She smiles.

"You're not staying, are you." It's not a question. Even though they haven't actually talked about it she knows. He didn't have to tell her. That's something he's grateful for, because if he had to look her in the face and say it he's not sure it would have come out.

"I—"

"You don't have to explain anything to me, Blair."

"No, I do," he insists. "Because it's not that I don't want to stay. It's not that. But I have to go back with them. That - everything back there - that's all I've ever had. I gotta help fix it. I gotta deal with my brother and dad, and my friends. All of it. And honestly? I think I just need five fucking minutes to wrap my head around all this. I don't think I ever really got that, you know? And I need it. And I think I need it alone."

"I think all of us need to do some things alone," she says quietly, and he nods.

"I don't know how long this is gonna take," he admits. "Days, or weeks, or months. But if you're still here—"

"I'll still be here."

He smiles. "If you're still here? I might just show up one day."

She smiles too, but rolls her eyes. It breaks a little bit of the strain, and he feels the knot in his stomach loosen a little, the hand that was crushing his lungs finally coming free. They didn't say anything the whole way here, and she doesn't say anything now when she pulls herself back up into the truck to hug him, a very brief shield from the world. For all the teasing, she didn't hug him when he got left in Six. Back then he was higher than a kite and had laughed at whatever she was saying before Luca had pulled him from the back of the truck, words he can't recall now for the life of him.

He has half a mind to be gentle with her, but he also knows that neither of them are gentle people. They hit this world hard, and fast, and nothing will change that. No amount of past damage will make that any different.

He closes his arms around her, tightly, and lowers his face into his shoulder and thinks that not hugging her back then was quite possibly a blessing in disguise.

Because right now, he's very aware of the fact that he doesn't want to let her go.

—

"Losing people is never easy," Talia says.

Nadir knows the truth when she hears it, and knows that Talia's words have never been more applicable than they are right now.

Because she has lost. Good or bad, she's lost a lot of things.

Talia watched her boyfriend bleed out and die on a stranger's living room floor, because there was no saving Cade once he stepped in front of her in the square. Nadir thinks that maybe she gets it more than most people usually would. She watched him die, and she watched the man who killed him hang in the square for the whole District to see, and nothing's really changed.

Not for either of them.

"Does it get easier?" she asks.

"Get back to you on that one."

So that's a no. For now, anyway. It hasn't even been a month. Almost two, since she got reaped. But that's it. Two measly months, and they ripped every single thing in her life apart. Towards her, away from her.

Mostly away from her.

She's still here. It's a shock to the system, to realize that you're alive, despite everything. She had thought she could survive. Thane hadn't. Most people, realistically, hadn't.

But most people, also realistically, can't imagine the things that can happen, when they look the opposite way.

Nadir vows to keep her eyes open, from here on out. It's not easy. It can get exhausting, even, to look all of those things in the face and accept them. It's even harder when she doesn't want to, when the last thing she thinks she has the strength left to do is accept that this is the world that very nearly killed her, multiple times, and still doesn't care.

This is that world.

But it's hers. It's all of theirs. No one can take that away from them.

It doesn't look so bleak, when you think of it like that.

—

Her family is keeping an even closer eye on her than Kelsea expected.

Regardless of what she expected, it doesn't come as a surprise. She just disappeared for almost three weeks. They had no idea where she was, even if they had a pretty good idea, and didn't know whether she was dead or alive, if she was ever coming back.

She'll tolerate their watchful eyes for a while longer. That's the least she can do.

That also kind of means that she's indirectly stuck in the house at the end of July, which is pretty terrible, but she'd rather be stuck here than get chaperoned around the entire District. She leaps off the couch at the sound of the knock at the door, anything to get away from Clarissa for a few seconds. She _is_ surprised to see Ada on the other side of the door, clutching a brightly wrapped present between both hands. She smiles very brightly, a vast contrast to how she had looked before Kelsea had run off to leave the District once again.

There were a lot of emotions between the two of them, then.

"Hey," she says, still smiling. "I know I'm about several weeks late, at this point, but I didn't want to bug you as soon as you got back. But here."

To Kelsea, it's not really the present that matters. She takes it out of Ada's hands, clutching it tight to her chest, and then steps aside so that her friend can get past her into the house.

Ada's _here_. Eliza's not. Kelsea can't help but think about the fact that Kellen only lost certain people, and not everyone. Some accepted him when he got back, some didn't. Maybe she didn't imagine that her own story would go the same way, but it makes sense. People say history doesn't repeat itself, and maybe it won't anymore, but everything is connected.

And some things are just fated to happen the same way twice.

But it's not the worst outcome to get, Kelsea decides, when she leans forward to hug Ada with her free arm.

Not the worst one at all.

—

The victor's village still doesn't necessary feel like home to Vance.

But he's trying to work on it.

He's been trying to ease his parents into it, bring them around more often into everyone's houses so that they feel as if they're allowed there, same as everyone else. It's only been a few weeks, since he's back back, but it feels like those few weeks have done wonders for him. His parents are no longer convinced that he's going to vanish on them. Emmett's started talking to him again, after maintaining fake angry status for nearly a full week. Aubrey and Pax are stopping to drop by again, like they would before.

Like nothing ever changed.

"You know, you're a painter, you should make something for this damn house," Aveza says, leaning back in her chair. "Soren's a horrible decorator."

"I decorate?"

"Exactly."

Soren throws the dish towel at her, and Kiero rolls his eyes. He can just see the edges of his parents sitting in the living room, talking to Della and Mia. He thinks they're finally starting to get it. Or at least he hopes they are.

"I think I've made my decision," he says quietly, and Kiero looks at him.

"Yeah?"

Vance nods. This won't be home, not really, unless he commits to it. There's seven other houses in this tucked away little corner of Eight, begging to be filled, and maybe a part of him is finally starting to accept that he deserves to be in one of them. It's not like his entire life hasn't been uprooted already. But they could settle back down. Fade into the background once again. Sort, of anyway.

He knows where he belongs, now. It's very relieving to know that.

—

It's pouring rain by the time Rooke leaves Viera's.

He should've left sooner. He's walking fine now, but he's still convinced it's a tad slower than usual. Usually he'll give himself a few extra minutes, to make sure that he'll get home before the sun goes down, but there's no doing that today.

He tries to take as many back alleys as he can, to get home quicker.

Which doesn't really happen. Why is he ever surprised, when he gets distracted by something?

He edges through the front door delayed by almost ten minutes, clutching what appears to be a puppy no bigger than the palm of his hand up against his chest. He's really hoping it's a dog. It's eyes aren't even open, fur plastered to his head. They basically look the same. Provided it is actually a dog, and not just something he couldn't recognize in the dark.

Ilara pops her head over the top of the couch before he even gets his shoes off, and proceeds to leap over the back of it and nearly into him when she catches sight of what he's holding.

"Oh my god," his sister cries. "Is that a—"

He slaps his hand over her mouth before she can get the word _dog_ out, but the rest of it was loud enough. She looks offended for a second, until both of their heads whip around at the sound of footsteps approaching from the kitchen. Definitely not enough time to get away. He still has one shoe on, for crying out-loud, and if Ilara got the message to run away when he did he'd be shocked.

Beckett leans around the corner and looks at the two of them, already an accusatory look in his eyes.

Yeah, he's in trouble.

—

Rory shouldn't be surprised that his arm strength kind of sucks, after having it virtually strapped against his chest for a month, but he somehow is.

He definitely won't be pulling a bowstring back anytime soon.

Then again, he doesn't need to.

He's still working on stretching it out at all. Everyone's been trying to help him, but life is continuing on as normal, swirling all around him while he sits in the middle of it. But at least he doesn't have to wait anymore for someone to pull him out of bed in the morning. He can do that himself now, thankfully. Even if _someone_ doesn't really want him to.

He looks up at Celia, on the couch. He can't quite tell from this angle, but he's pretty sure the book she's looking at is upside down. "Can I ask you something?"

"No."

He ignores her. "You recognized Fenton, hey?"

She drops the book on her chest. "You too?"

He nods. She tilts her head back and looks up at the ceiling, humming. At first he had just thought that his brain was playing tricks on him. He hadn't wanted to say anything because he was convinced he was wrong, at the time. But Fenton is their age. Would've been in Celia's classes. And here she is agreeing with him, about it all. It's kind of a relief to know that he wasn't hallucinating.

"Some people just disappear," she says.

"Some come back."

"Not all of them."

Not Fenton. He's still off in Two, or Six. He could be anywhere. He probably won't be coming back to Four any time soon, even though it was his home for over half his life, even though he shouldn't have been pulled away from it in the first place.

Some people just don't come back.

But Rory did.

—

Tanis can only stir her cereal for so long.

It's a quiet morning, but that's been pretty much all of them since she got back. Dad off to work before she woke up. Her mom will be gone soon, too, as soon as she's done with whatever she's scrubbing away at in the sink.

"I'm sorry."

Her mother turns around, eyebrows furrowed. "For what?"

"For - for what I said before. You know, all of this. About you not understanding. I pretty much snapped on you, and I shouldn't have. I know you were just trying to help. It just sucked at that moment in time."

She's already sitting down next to her, laying a hand over top of hers where it's resting next to her bowl of extremely soggy cereal.

"I may not know what you went through, but I know that you didn't mean it. What you should be sorry for is leaving in the middle of the night without waking us up and then giving your father and I a heart attack when we woke up in the morning."

Tanis laughs, and her mother stands up, only letting go of her hand to press a kiss to the top of her head. "I'll be back in the afternoon. Love you."

"Love you too."

She hasn't even really begun to try and explain everything, but they haven't pushed her, either. Right now she can't quite manage to find the words to explain it. She's sure those words will come one day, and maybe she'll finally feel comfortable enough to explain it to the people who care the most about her. For now she sits there, listening to the sound of the front door closing shut, and stares into the mush that is now her breakfast. It's a little step, practically non-existent, but that's alright.

A little step goes a very long way.

—

"Hey, asshole."

Celia looks up from where she's sitting on the front porch, and Malia is standing ten feet away. She's been spending more time on the porch lately. On the stairs. There's only two of them, rickety old wooden things that creak every time she sits down on them.

"Hi?"

They both stare at each other. Malia looks like, well, Malia. Effortlessly put together, nose an inch higher in the air than the rest of the population.

"How's your boyfriend?"

"Fine? He was worse a month ago."

"You know, you just admitted he was your boyfriend."

Celia sighs, and Malia takes that as a sign to sit down on the stairs next to her, apparently. Celia has no idea why she took that as a sign.

"What are you doing?"

"Sitting. I'm bored."

She sighs again. She only ever comes out here to get a minute of peace and quiet, to soak in the sun and watch the road for a moment, and what of the ocean she can see beyond it. Trust her sister to ruin even that. Trust her to show up uninvited and just insert herself here, because that's what she does everywhere else and no one tells her not to. All Malia did before this was train, every waking hour. Now there's nothing for her to do.

"If you want an apology, you're not getting one," Celia informs her.

Malia nudges her so hard in the shoulder she nearly careens off into the dirt, so she does it back. Malia sways for a moment before she falls still again.

"You're a dick."

"So are you."

Well. At least they're still on the same page with each other.

—

Wearing head to toe black is something Dimara's gotten pretty used to.

The arena was one thing - Royal's funeral, and now Valiant's - is really starting to push it.

They sent his body back to One as soon as they could, but no one was really prepared to do anything with it. They had wanted to wait until at least Ivory and Tilve got back, but someone must have convinced his family to wait for her, too. It is touching, regardless of whether or not she really wants to be here.

Ivory had been restless on her feet the whole time, and Tilve had looked as if he was coming up to the tail end of a month long headache. Kali's hand was in hers the entire time, and Dimara must be drained, because even the sight of Kali crying isn't enough to get her going.

Ivory and Tilve wander off, once it's over. She doesn't move much, and Kali stays at her side, something that Dimara has been very grateful for this entire time. She's never once tried to leave. Even when she gives her space she's still there, watching with opening arms, waiting to catch her if she falls. And she feels like she's fallen far enough.

"I'm glad it was you that volunteered," Kali says quietly. "I don't think I would have survived all of this."

Dimara doesn't think that's all the way true, but she can't argue with Kali right now, standing in front of Valiant's headstone in the ground, Royal's not far away.

"I'm glad it was me too," she agrees. "Because I _know_ I wouldn't have survived with you out there."

Kali's smile is a little sad when she looks up at her, but she leans over to kiss her on the cheek and then rest her head on her shoulder, hands still intertwined. It's a lot to deal with. Even more, that she has to learn to let go of.

But she will.

She's working on it.

—

Apparently Blair's not very good at watching kids.

There's been a lot going on. Too much, if you ask him. He's pretty much sleeping anywhere he can, at this point. He just wasn't supposed to sleep now, when his only job was watching Krista and Liana. They're not even kids. Teenagers a few years younger than him. Apparently he can't even handle that.

It's almost sundown, though. Valerie should be back soon. She's been fighting with the senate for too long now, trying to make sure that they're not taking Ashlar's money away from her. She's got two daughters to take care of. She wants to help them re-build. She wants to honor her husband's memory in whichever way she can, even if that means leaving her children with _him_ for a day, who apparently falls asleep literally anywhere.

"You're a shit uncle," Julian says from behind the couch.

"I'm not their uncle."

"Might as well be. But _I'm_ the one that convinced them both to close their eyes, so you're a shitty one."

He clambers off the couch and elbows Julian in the side. He jumps away, wincing.

"Can't just do that anymore, dude. Fucking hurts."

He reaches back to punch him in the shoulder, this time with a very much human hand, and Blair's aware that it hurts a hell of a lot less. At first he had just been screwing with him, making him leaping away to avoid getting hit by a fist made of metal, but now it's just reaction. He doesn't think about it. It's his arm. It doesn't matter what it looks like.

He looks a little better. Not quite as gaunt. He thinks his nose is maybe a hair more crooked than it was before, but he seriously can't tell. The arm's really the only obvious symbol that anything even happened.

He's torn. He almost wishes there was some sort of obvious difference, other than the ones inside him.

But he can't change any of that. Anything at all, really.

He's been made very aware of that fact, these past few months.

—

The fence has been on for as long as Nadir's been alive.

It used to be off, eighty five years ago and before that. After that not so much. She doesn't know a single person that's been beyond it, but she knows people who have tried. They all still have electrical burn marks on their hands and down their arms. Even the ones who have tried to cut through it haven't gotten through.

When she gets back, it's off.

A very delighted Jericho informs her of this, and then drags her off at the crack of dawn the next morning to go investigate. The road alongside the fence is teeming with people, the cracked open fence an obvious gateway to the wide meadow and trees beyond it. There are actual crowds, and children running in happy circles, adults sitting down in the tall grass and talking.

She's seen a lot of woods, recently. And most of it looks the same.

But this doesn't just look like woods. It looks like freedom.

Jericho's already through on the other side, standing on the well-worn and trampled grass, but she hesitates. She looks over all the people, such a vast change from the state of mourning the entire District was in before. No one's really looking at her. They're all too busy taking in what's around them, experiencing it for the first time and breathing it in like today will be their last chance to do so.

It won't. Not if she has a say in it.

"C'mon." Jericho beckons her through with a hand, so she takes a deep breath and ducks through, feet moving from the hard-packed, well-traveled road to the softness of the meadow, wildflowers up in bloom around their feet, birds swooping and singing overhead.

Jericho is grinning like a maniac. It's only slightly unnerving. "Pretty sweet, hey?"

"Yeah," she agrees, and her voice is a little thick with unshed tears, but no one cares anymore. "Yeah, it is."

—

Kelsea Faraday is not letting herself be afraid of the dark.

She knows there are dozens of things out there, beyond what the eye can see, and she also knows that she's only had the unfortunate stroke of luck that has allowed her to see maybe a small handful of them. What she's seen has been bad, there's no dying that, but she isn't about to let that fear of the great, unknown beyond stop her from living. In fact, she wants to embrace it.

She starts waking up before the dawn to trek the mile to Kellen's house at the beginning of August. It's over ten acres of property, sprawling fields that stretch out into the distance. Sometime's Sammy will come with her, or Ada. But this time she goes alone, and by the time she opens the back gate to the lengths of fencing the sunrise is starting to bleed into the darkened sky, streaks of orange and yellow.

This is good for her. Like therapy but not. She flicks on all the lights in the barns at the back of the pastures, all of the animals waking slowly. Her family has cows and not much else; Kellen has basically created a zoo in his backyard. Nothing better to do.

He's up later than usual today. By the time he comes ambling out onto the low deck at the back of the house she's already fed the horses and the chickens, let all the cows out to graze.

"You realize you've got a line of chicks following you, right?" he calls.

Kelsea may or may not have been steadily dropping seeds behind her the entire time ever since she left the coop, and since then there has been a steady sound of peeping coming from behind her as she heads closer back to the house. She's been trying for a week, to get them to follow her. She's surprised at how quickly she coerced them into coming out.

Kellen didn't accept the victor's village, when he got back, and he wound up here.

She really gets why.

But everyone handles things differently, and needs unusual things in order to cope. Kellen needed solitude, and a chance to rebuild something that wasn't himself. She needed company, a layer of warmth surrounding her, a single shred of the bravery she possessed on that last day in the Games, no matter how terrified she really was in the moment.

They both got the things they needed.

The sun comes up, rays warm against her bare arms, and she releases a very deep breath.

—

Vance Derora is not just a symbol left on a wall.

Some days it used to feel like that. Some days he would put the _V_ on a wall, draw the circle around it, and it would feel like that was the only way he really existed. The only thing people knew him as.

He finishes another one, alongside a massive mural that took all four of them nearly a week, if you don't count Pax just sitting there nearly the entire time. Some of the paint rolls and drips down the wall, where it lands with a splatter by his shoes.

Every time he paints another one Aubrey _looks_ at him. She knows he left one way out there in the wilderness, and that it doesn't just stand for him anymore. Not even the four of them. There's a whole lot more tied into all of this now, and he hopes that they don't have to understand all of it. The best parts, and that's it. The kindness and support and healing. Nothing else.

"Still gonna handout super secret codenames?" Aubrey asks, and he laughs.

"I still maintain that if they're doing that his name should be Vegetable," Pax announces.

"Vaccum," Emmett says, deadpan, because apparently thinking of any _appropriate_ words that start with a v is just asinine to ask of them.

He looks at Aubrey. She looks back.

"Vampire?" she asks slowly.

"Definitely not one of those."

She snickers, and turns away. He really does need to think about this, and maybe not ask them for any of their opinions until he's set on something. Clearly they've never gotten anything done like that.

Vance isn't trying to get rid of who he is. That's not it. But he thinks, and he knows the others all agree, that having some sort of name, or word to assign themselves, will help. They're all split into two people, now. The one that existed before, and the one that exists after. The one that exists _now_. It's trying to combine the two that becomes tricky, trying to blur the line into a safe place, one that feels normal again.

He's not what this symbol makes him out to be.

He's a lot more than that.

—

Rooke Arvelle did not survive by accident.

He thinks everyone else realized that long before he did. Nothing in this world really happens by accident. That's just the word people use when they can't accept the alternative, when they can't accept that terrible things just happen, without care for who they happen to.

He may not have killed anyone in the Games, but he still has a very clear image in his head, of the scythe in that woman's chest. For how terrible his vision was in that moment, the clarity is something else.

The scythe is gone, too. No one brought it back with them.

Regardless, it feels like there's a little bit of death that's a part of him now, and it's not just the scar on his arm. Something seeped in there and took root in his bones, and he doesn't want to push it back out. That type of thing is hard to voice to other people. He hasn't really talked to anyone about it, because he knows it wouldn't make sense.

"What's up?" Austin asks him. Rooke hadn't been aware he'd been giving it away that much, all over his face.

"I killed someone."

"What?"

"When we were in Two. She was following me, after she hit me. And I killed her."

Austin blinks a few times, clearly not expecting that to have come out of his mouth. He hasn't told his parents, or Beckett. Viera almost got it out of him, but back then he was a little bit screwed up on painkillers and thankfully fell asleep before it managed to slip out. Maybe he was just afraid to admit it, to the people he was closest with.

Maybe he was more afraid to admit that he felt less scared, after doing it.

Less scared of the world. Less scared of himself, no matter how little that makes sense. Less scared of the future.

After a moment, Austin's lips quirk up a little bit. "Good."

—

Rory Mirevale is not what he thought he would be.

But that's mostly because he thought he'd be dead by now.

That's what was supposed to happen, what was written out in almost certainty. He wasn't supposed to come back to the same life, to what he did and lived through every day. Not that he's going to complain, because things _have_ changed. Just not in the way he expected them to.

He's alone for the first time in a while when someone raps on the door a few times, and then he hears Costa's voice calling through the entrance-way, before he steps out into the living room to face her. She doesn't look quite so haggard, these days. At least all of them are starting to sleep normally again. Small blessings.

She thrusts the large envelope she's holding in her hands at him. "Read this."

So much for a hello, or even a hug. He pries open the envelope and unfolds a sheaf of papers from it, trying to skim them over as quickly as he can, with her staring at him the entire time. That still doesn't mean it makes sense.

"What is this?"

She takes a deep breath. "Ashlar's wife won the legal battle to keep his winnings, so we... we went after Ronan's, too. And we got it. Those are forms for you to create an account large enough to hold the funds. And then one that you have to give back to us, once you fill it out. So we have permission to transfer them to you."

He opens his mouth, and she's ready for him. She lifts the envelope up and slaps it over his mouth.

"Listen," she starts. There are tears in his eyes. Sleeping better, but still all crying on the regular, apparently. "As hard as this is for all of us to say out-loud, he died protecting you. That's how he would've wanted to go. That's what he chose. And if he was here right now, he'd still be protecting you guys. We all know that. So let us do that. Let him do that."

He's not great when other people start crying. There are already tears in his own eyes, and she squeezes his arm.

"Don't let anyone tell you this isn't something you deserve. You and Celia deserve a happy life, and you deserve to be able to take care of your families, and to have a house in the victor's village, or wherever the fuck you want. Just as long as you're happy."

He's trying. He's trying so hard to be happy, no matter how badly it hurts.

He's trying, and that's all that he can do.

—

Tanis Maes did not plan on being the villain in all of this.

She still kind of feels that way, though. Regardless of what her parents tell her, she still feels like she did something wrong. You think you can tell her otherwise, when she chopped off three fingers that belonged to her ally and then killed someone the very next day? Unlikely.

It's Evie, of all people, that doesn't lie to her. That lets her accept all of these broken faults and things that she shouldn't have done, at a painfully slow pace.

Evie herself never accepts them. She just knows Tanis, and what she is. Nothing else matters.

"Have you ever thought about going to Five?" Evie asks her one day, out of the blue. She doesn't really know how to respond to that. Of course she's never thought about it; what would she do, in an unfamiliar District with a family who probably won't speak to her because of what she did to their daughter? Would they even be willing to look her in the eye?

"They wouldn't talk to me."

"Maybe not." Evie shrugs. "Or maybe they would. Maybe it would help."

Her, or them? She can't help but suspect that Evie's referring to them both. It's certainly an idea. Going to Five, even if it's not for long. Trying to reconcile the person she is with the villain she almost became, because of the very much villainous girl she was standing next to, almost until the end of it all. They may not speak to her, but it would still be something, to thank them. Because she doesn't think she'd be standing here, if it wasn't for Isi. There's nothing twisted about it.

Tanis won't try and delude herself into thinking she would have survived any other way.

Go to Five. Thank the family of a girl who indirectly gave her life, even if she didn't realize it at the time.

Five, and then head for the others. Start moving on.

Because if she knows anything, it's that she's getting sick and tired of staying in one place.

—

Celia Bradshaw is not as invincible as she'd like people to think.

She actually gets a little bit emotional when they move houses, and sends her mother an envelope full of money enough to last her the rest of her life, unmarked. She's sure she'll figure out where it came from, but she's not about to get involved.

Rory's siblings go tearing around the house and break a vase in the first ten minutes they're there, but two weeks later they're situated, and she is coming to terms with the fact that she is atrocious at staying in her own room. She tries. Usually. But she soon comes to realize that there's no point to pretending in all of this. He never cares, when she crawls into bed with him. Hell, the few nights she held her resolve and stayed in her own room were the nights where he came into hers instead, wondering where she was.

She's not even laying down for an hour before she quits and heads down the hall into his room. He's asleep, no surprise there, but she pulls the blankets up and slips under. He mumbles something as soon as she shifts closer and holds his arm up, allowing her up against his chest like he does every night. His arm comes down, fingers gentle against her back.

The bed is huge and she rests her head under his chin, uncaring for how much available space exists on either side of them.

It's so quiet in here, but the sound of the ocean is enough to break that. You can see it perfectly from the window, the moon lit up against the waves.

"Rory?"

"Hm?"

"I love you."

He goes still all over, his hands flattening against her back before they come up to tilt her face up, even if the absolute last thing she wants to do right now is look at him. How outrageous would that be? When she does, though, his smile is very gentle, just this shy of pleased, and she's so glad she admitted she was fucked a long time ago, or she'd have to do it again right now.

"Love you too," he murmurs, and she leans up to kiss him before he thinks to say it again, because if he does that she might just die.

There's worse ways to go, than kissing him, next to him, with him.

She's all too aware of that.

—

Dimara Vespoli was not in fact meant to win.

A fact she'll never have to come to terms with, thankfully.

She is not Cashmere, or Ivory, or even Royal. She's not like any of them, didn't do the things they did or accomplish what she set out to do in the first place. So she doesn't deserve the same honor that they get, but someone still tries. It wouldn't be One if someone wasn't trying to do something unnecessarily extravagant just to say they did. That's all people do here.

She still manages to be surprised, when Kali's father tells her they want to name the new Academy after someone: her.

"I don't deserve that," she says.

"Someone clearly thinks you do. It's going to be something good for the District. A safe place for people. A home, if they need it. It won't be as brutal as it was before."

 _And hopefully it won't get burned down_ , she thinks, but the overwhelming thought of not having her name attached to something like that is stronger. That's for people who lead armies and creates cities, for people who win Games. She did none of those things, and never will. She's not the person meant to be doing those things, and she's fine with it.

But there's another idea in the back of her mind, too, and her heart can't help but ache for Royal, when she thinks it. Royal, who she'll never live up to.

Royal, who's gone and can't tell her to shut up.

"Royal always talked about having kids," she says quietly. "Once she got engaged she never stopped talking about it. She wanted a daughter that she could love and cherish and that's what she should've been able to have. She wanted a daughter. And she was going to name her Venus."

A pretty weighty name, even for One. The personification for love and beauty, everything this new Academy will hopefully be, when it comes to stand.

"I think that sounds lovely."

"Yeah? Because I was thinking of using it for something else, too."

"Oh, really? What was that?"

She's not Venus. She's not all love and beauty, not just an idea that won't ever happen now.

But she can try to be.

—

Blair Carnell is not a rebel.

Or is he?

He's not trying to be. He was _never_ trying to be. Like Seren said, everything could have been different, had he not ascended the stairs to the stage that day. He's just trying to help re-build what little of Two he can, as hard as it is. To this day they're still finding bodies, picking things out of the rubble left behind from the bombings. It doesn't really help that he's hardly sleeping, either, because they gave the trainee barracks to everyone who was displaced, and he's pretty much out of a bed now. Sleeping in any random corner you can find? Not great.

He's currently off in search of something to eat, which is about as easy as finding a place to sleep, when Mauro grabs his jacket between the shoulder blades and pulls him to a dead stop.

" _What_?" he asks, already exasperated as Mauro grabs him by both shoulders and looks at him. He really doesn't like being scrutinized.

"When was the last time you slept?"

"Last night."

"I meant more than an hour."

Well, Mauro's decidedly not going to like the answer to that one, so he stays silent. No use making it worse than it already is.

"Listen," Mauro starts. "Do you not get that this isn't all on you? You're eighteen years old, for crying out-loud, you shouldn't be—"

"I'm nineteen."

"What?"

"I'm nineteen," he repeats. "My birthday was three days ago."

Blair has never seen his brother shut up so quickly in his life, at that. To be fair to Mauro, Blair himself didn't even realize it was his birthday until halfway through the day, when Julian had pointed it out, and he couldn't even raise the energy to really care. One year older in the grand scheme of things when he already feels seventy years old is nothing. Mauro doesn't say anything and starts pulling him off down the hall, and he's pretty much just too tired to fight him. And hungry. He's still hungry. He isn't really aware of where Mauro's even taking him, until he hears the click of a door opening and then Mauro unceremoniously drops him face-first onto a bed.

Oh, a bed. That's nice. Definitely Mauro's room then, and his roommate must have vacated because that's the bed Blair must be laying on now. Mauro lifts his legs up and drops them down too, but not before he tugs his boots off and then yanks one of the blankets out from under him to drape it over him, all the way up to his neck. Blair has pretty much given up on opening his eyes at this point, but Mauro puts a hand on the back of his shoulder, being unrealistically gentle about it, and he figures he doesn't need to.

"Do you need anything?"

"For you to stop being nice to me," he mumbles into the pillow. "It's weird and I don't like it."

Mauro sighs. "Go to sleep, Blair."

He's already gone.

—

Nadir Kuenzli is not broken, as she comes to learn.

For a long time it kind of felt like she was. At least a small part of her, if anything. Like there was a crack somewhere that was just waiting for it's moment to split open, until she was in so many pieces that she couldn't put herself back together even if she had wanted to.

No one would fault her for being broken. She still has her moments. Sometimes she still wants to scream or sob or, in stereotypical fashion, shake her fists at the sky and ask why her, of all the people, why did this have to happen to _her?_ But she knows there's no point in asking, because no one that exists will be able to give her an answer that makes sense.

If fate is really a thing, then it all happened for a reason.

She's always going to have scars, and sometimes that's hits her harder than it usually does. Right now might be one of those times, but it does usually happen when she's alone. On the couch, alone, staring at the impossibly high ceilings of a victor's village house, wondering if she would still be here, had everything not happened before. Probably not.

Someone knocks on the door.

She doesn't move for a second. It's been a while, since the idea of someone on the other side of a door properly scared her.

And besides. It's not like he ever knocked.

She isn't really sure what she's expecting to see on the other side of the door, but she definitely wasn't expecting her heart to almost stop.

"I swear I would have been here yesterday," Blair says, before she can get a single word out. "But I went to your house only to find out you had apparently moved, and it was late, so I had to sleep at the train station."

She starts laughing.

Or crying. She can't really tell the difference, but there are definitely both things going on. She puts both hands over her face, even though there's no hiding the hysteria rising within her. Blair's arms come up around her and she takes her own hands off her face to hug him back, because his shoulder is more than good enough to hide the hysteria in, even as he lifts her feet up off the ground.

"Stop laughing," Blair insists, even though he's almost laughing too. "It fucking sucked."

If only she _could_ make herself stop. It's been almost two months. She had already come to terms with the fact that he wasn't coming back, because that's just what people do. They say things and then do the complete opposite, human nature in full effect, and he had no reason to ever come back here.

Or maybe he did.

* * *

 **Ten months later.**

* * *

It's how the saying goes - time heals everything.

Or something like that. Most of the time.

Most people would say that's bullshit, but those are the people that either haven't lived through it, or have never really tried. They're the people who see time as an obstacle instead of something to embrace, something to overcome.

But they all need time. It's a proven fact.

The fact of the matter is, healing is subjective. Everyone does it differently. Some people do it together, and some people do it alone. Some people just never do it at all, and fall prey to the worst part of life, letting go before anything can be fixed.

You have to look for the smallest of things. Those points of refuge that seem like they shouldn't even exist.

This is one of those moments.

It's so far off even the largest buildings in Four are a mere pinprick on the horizon. It's not untouched, and Rory knows that, but it's very easy to imagine that it is, when you close your eyes. Without sight it's just the salt in the air, the waves lapping up the shore, the seagulls wheeling overhead.

It feels like a safe haven. A place where nothing bad ever happens.

Or at least it would seem like that, if it didn't appear that Kelsea was trying to drown Vance.

Rooke can't lie - that's exactly what it looks like.

But he also knows there are far too many things that look like one thing and end up being the complete opposite. He looks at most of them, in these moments. It's the scar on his arm, too, a permanent reminder of something he can never forget.

He looks up at Rory. "I'm not going out there if one of them gets dragged out."

"And you think he would?" Celia interrupts. "He'd panic. I'd have to go out there."

Something she's fine with, oddly enough. It gives her purpose, whens he felt like she had lost all of that, ten months back.

She's working on it.

Besides, it would be a sight to behold, they're all sure. It's broken by the car that drives over the dunes in the back, stopping just below. Vance finally manages to drag himself away from Kelsea long enough for her to realize that the rest of them arrived, effectively stopping it.

Not that Vance ever wants to drag himself away, when he knows that this is what saved him, in the end.

"Fashionably late as always!" Vance calls. Kelsea is already charging up the beach towards the car, managing to splatter water all over them as she goes running by.

"Not my fault," Blair yells from the front-seat. They really should not be trusting him to drive, ever.

Dimara clambers out of the back-seat with Tanis on her heels and manages to catch Kelsea before she goes tumbling headfirst into the car, which is only going to result in the both of them getting soaked, but no one's going to complain about that, either. That's the last thing Kelsea would complain about, certainly, when she looks forward to these moments more than anything else.

"It totally was," Nadir says, coming up to the rest of them, still congregated down by the water. "He drives like a maniac. It's the worst thing Seren ever taught him how to do."

Something they've all experienced too many times, no matter who you'd ask. It's not as if they'd trade it for anything, though.

They've gotten really good, at splitting up and then coming back together. It's become their thing, if you want to call it that.

Nadir is shocked that they have a single thing that they can call their own, after everything that happened. The fact that they can still come back to one place whenever one of them needs it, wrap their arms around each other and feel safe.

It _is_ hard, to feel safe. It doesn't come easily.

But they're trying. And she thinks Tanis understands that struggle all too well. She was never safe.

Tanis _did_ go to Five, an experience she has locked away far deep inside herself where she knows she can protect it. There's not many things she can do that with. Her entire experience in the arena is still out there for whenever the world wants to see it.

She's not sure when something like this started feeling safe.

But the beach is a nice change.

Dimara could live here her entire life, and she knows Kali feels the same way. She only mourns one thing, now, and that's the fact that Kali couldn't make it this time, after seeing it half a dozen other times. But she would never stop her from coming on her own, either, when she knows how desperately she needs it.

There's a lot of things she could still be mourning, theoretically. Things that are buried far beneath the earth now, things that still hurt when she lets herself linger on them long enough.

But there's no point in letting that pain take over the rest of your life.

Blair may actually be a perfect example of that, when he's never been a perfect example of anything.

He nearly slips getting out of the car, and is only so determined to trek through the sand to get to the rest of them. It hasn't been that long. A month, about, since he last saw them all.

That doesn't make it any less ground-breaking.

He grabs Nadir by the shoulders when the sand nearly takes him down again, and one of her hands closes over his instinctively. This happens more than it should.

"Have I ever mentioned that I hate the sand?"

"Multiple times."

"What's the sand ever done to you?" Celia asks, looking offended for it.

"Existed," Blair says. "And every time we get home we find it in random places for like, two weeks."

 _Home_. It's a troublesome word, at the heart of it, because of how close they all came to losing it. And it's even more difficult now that the meaning of home itself has changed, when it's changed into things that are different than what existed before they first left.

Blair's grateful, for all of those changes, when not so many people would be.

He leans down to kiss the top of her head, and she squeezes his hand. Still instinctual.

"Gross," Tanis says, like she hasn't been dealing with this for months, and then tries to pick Rooke up off the ground in an attempt to shove him into the water.

That's about as normal as it gets.

"We can't stay here forever."

"That's why we go home periodically, idiot."

She's got a point. She does more often than not.

"It's just - I think there's a lot of things out there. Things we never imagined, impossible things. Do you not think we should all go find out what's out there, together?"

"Together?"

He smiles. "Yeah. Together."

"And what are we going to tell everyone else? You know, the rest of the world who still doesn't know how to look at all of us?"

She had a point. There were thousands of people out there, millions. They would all want explanations from them, at the first chance to get them. They would want to know what they were doing so far from home, and what they were still going through.

Who they were now.

And Blair wasn't sure he had an answer for that.

But they had time. If there's one thing he's aware of, as he leans down to properly kiss her, it's that they had so much time it still ached in his heart.

"If anyone asks," he says. "Just tell them we're doing alright."

* * *

 **Cambria Mervaine, 40 years, Former Head Gamemaker.**

* * *

Cambria had come to accept waking up alone a very long time ago.

But it wasn't cold, not like the Capitol had been. Waking up alone then was accepting that she could possibly be alone forever, if this didn't go the way she wanted it to.

It was different now. Whenever she opened her eyes in the morning she would hear the soft sounds of footfalls downstairs, the quiet murmur of voices.

Or not so quiet, she realizes, because Mercia doesn't know what quiet is.

She can't help but wonder who she got _that_ from.

It's the same every morning. She wakes up alone, because Ferrox and sleep isn't an equation that adds up well, anymore. She swings herself out of bed and opens up the windows and the curtains, takes her time to herself before she eventually wanders downstairs. By that point, the pot of coffee would already be half-empty, a few dishes stacked in the sink. Something would be out of place already, or she'd step on something that nobody bothered picking up the night before.

It's a very mundane routine.

She thinks she kind of deserves mundane.

She pours herself her own cup of coffee and watches Ferrox stagger back to the front steps, after successfully detaching Mercia from his back. Atlas is starting to look more bleary-eyed these days, as he's come to realize sleep is a commodity he should be getting as much as he can of, but Mercia is still as wild as ever, and she probably always will be.

By the time she steps outside Ferrox is sitting down on the front steps, so she sits behind him. He leans back against her, grimacing.

"I think I pulled a muscle in my back."

"Welcome to being old," she informs him, and he makes a displeased face. Even being old doesn't sound so bad, these days.

It's better than being dead.

"She is a terror," Ferrox says, although the love and adoration in his voice is really canceling that out. "She clearly got that from your side of the family."

"No, Atlas did," she insists. "You and Vesper were demons when you were younger. You're still demons. Bell and I have always been fine. I'm not taking blame for this."

Maybe Mercia is only such a demon because she got raised by one person instead of two.

Not like they can go back and re-do it.

Those four almost five years, being alone, it never seemed like they'd be worth it in the long run. There were times when she felt so miserable that when she closed her eyes at night she prayed she wouldn't wake up. She felt so sick, at the thought of all of this.

She did all of that to get this.

Looking at it now, that was worth it.

And looking at Ferrox, she knows he thinks the same thing. They're both different now. They both did terrible things in their quest to survive, and sometimes she'll look at him and he'll be staring vacantly in the opposite direction. Some days he won't even talk to her.

Sometimes she just wants to scream and put herself back ten years, but then she wouldn't have _this._

He's got that look now, a distant glimmer in his eyes like he's somewhere else entirely, and she hooks her chin over his shoulder. He doesn't so much as flinch, but she sees his eyes start to wander again, starting back up into the real world.

"You okay?"

He nods. "I'm good."

It doesn't sound like a total lie. Besides, she knows there's a part of Ferrox that's never going to be able to let all of this go, even if she manages to. She _can_ still manage to relax herself, regardless of his feelings throughout the day. But he needs to know what it is that she believes, if only to help him sleep better at night.

"Hey," she murmurs quietly. "It's done. I just want you to realize that. I want you to understand that it's time for someone else to move. To play the game. It's their first line to write, their page to turn. It's over, Fer. All of this - our story - it's over."

It felt like an ending to her. Up until this point it hadn't. But this, right now, holding him in her arms and watching her children play in the sand, the waves crashing up along the shore - it all brought a sense of finality upon her shoulders. But it didn't feel heavy, not like the weight of the world on her shoulders. It felt freeing.

Ferrox smiles. It was that smile that had gotten them into trouble in the first place, so many years ago. She had been stupid enough to fall in love with it. Foolish enough to cling to it.

Hopeful enough that she would see it again.

"No," he says, and that smile is the brightest thing she's ever laid eyes on. "I don't think it is."

* * *

 **End.**

* * *

Until next time.


End file.
